Aircraft

First ammonia-powered jet flight in 2023: A roadmap to clean aviation

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Aviation H2 directors, brothers Christof (left) and Helmut Mayer, with the kind of Falcon 50 business jet they hope to have flying on ammonia by mid-2023
Aviation H2
Aviation H2 directors, brothers Christof (left) and Helmut Mayer, with the kind of Falcon 50 business jet they hope to have flying on ammonia by mid-2023
Aviation H2
The fuel system will require some of the ammonia to be cracked into hydrogen before being fed into the turbofan engine. Engine exhaust heat will be fed back into the ammonia cracker.
Aviation H2
The Aviation H2 team believes it can convert existing jets to run carbon-free with relatively minor changes
Aviation H2
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The entire airline industry needs to wean itself off jet fuel over the next few decades – but it's still buying enormously expensive jet aircraft that are expected to keep bringing home the bacon for more than 20 years. Australian company Aviation H2 hopes to clean up commercial flight by converting existing aircraft to burn green ammonia instead of standard Jet-A jet fuel. To do so, it's planning to have a nine-seat passenger jet in the air and flying on ammonia by the middle of next year.

Ammonia, as we've discussed at length, is a promising energy carrier and future fuel with interesting potential for decarbonizing sectors like shipping and rail. The second-most produced chemical in the world today, it's primarily used as a fertilizer, but as the clean energy revolution kicks in, it'll start to be used effectively as an easier way to move and store green hydrogen.

Renewable energy, as we all know, isn't produced where and when you want it. Often, clean energy potential sits an inconvenient distance from where the demand is. If that clean energy is used to electrolyze water and produce hydrogen, it can be stored and transported. But that hydrogen can also be mixed with atmospheric nitrogen to produce ammonia, which travels much better than either gaseous or cryogenic liquid H2.

"Hydrogen gas is very light for the energy it holds and liquid hydrogen is a more compact form," Aviation H2 Director Christof Mayer tells us over a video chat. "But the tanks are big and heavy. We certainly don't discount liquid hydrogen or any other form of hydrogen as an option. We're not shutting those down. We're just going with ammonia for now. It's the simplest conversion, and that intrinsically will make it the most reliable, and that in itself makes it intrinsically the safest."

There are a few different ways to get the energy out of ammonia as electricity, but Aviation H2 has zeroed in on its potential as a combustion fuel. With a few modifications, a regular jet engine can be converted to run on ammonia, eliminating all its carbon dioxide emissions in a way that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The operation will be much faster and cheaper than a hydrogen fuel cell conversion, which would require you to throw out your perfectly good turbofan engines and replace them with electric motors, as well as gutting your fuel storage systems and putting in something radically different.

The fuel system will require some of the ammonia to be cracked into hydrogen before being fed into the turbofan engine. Engine exhaust heat will be fed back into the ammonia cracker.
Aviation H2

"We need to modify the fuel storage system into something that's basically similar to an LPG tank," says Mayer. "So it's the fuel storage, the engine control, and the engine, those are the big ticket items that we need to develop. But we're not really changing the design of the engine much at all physically."

Safety, of course, will be under extreme scrutiny throughout the clean aviation revolution, and to that end, Aviation H2 and other companies like it will eventually have to have all their powertrains certified by relevant aviation authorities. Emissions will also be under the microscope, and here, ammonia combustion runs into a problem. As the hydrogen in ammonia is broken off and joined with atmospheric oxygen to form water, a percentage of the nitrogen also gets oxidized in the flame, causing environmentally harmful nitrous oxides.

Mayer says the company is working on solutions. "Yes, it gives off nitrous oxides," he tells us. "But we can control those by special processes. We don't just squirt the ammonia in there and burn, there's certain things we have to do to it, and there's certain controls we have to put in place inside the fuel control system."

The company's initial target is to get a small regional nine-seat jet built and flight tested. After three months of feasibility studies, it's signed an agreement with charter operator FalconAir, giving Aviation H2 access to FalconAir's hangars, facilities and operating licenses. FalconAir will help acquire turbofan engines for ground-based testing, as well as the aircraft itself, most likely a Dassault Falcon 50 business jet, since it's got three engines, but can run on two.

As far as range goes, the initial plan is to build an aircraft capable of hour-long flights, with the same engine thrust and performance characteristics as it would get on Jet-A. It'll be a useful range to begin with, says Mayer, better than other zero-carbon options, and with some further development the company believes it can get ammonia-fueled flight into the ballpark of traditional fuel ranges as they stand today.

The Aviation H2 team believes it can convert existing jets to run carbon-free with relatively minor changes
Aviation H2

The plan is to have a plane in the air, with at least one engine running on ammonia, by mid-2023, to prove the concept – this could be a first for jet-powered aviation, although in broader terms NASA's X-15 flew on rockets powered by ammonia and liquid oxygen back in 1959. The company will then go public on a stock exchange to raise the funds needed to get an ammonia powertrain patented, certified and commercialized as a product. Eventually, Aviation H2 hopes to begin retrofitting existing planes as a transitional step for carriers looking to decarbonize, taking advantage of the fact that the rest of the aircraft is already fully certified to bring down compliance costs.

"There's a lot of small jets in the world, particularly in China, America and Europe, that you don't want to throw on the scrap heap," says Mayer. "They're major investments for their operators. And these turbofan engines need to be rebuilt every so many thousand hours. So retrofitting makes sense."

Long-term, the company envisions a drop-in hangar service where companies can leave their planes for a matter of weeks, then pick them up and have them running carbon-free.

"The bottom line is, this really needs to happen," says Mayer. "It's got to happen. Now's the time for pioneering development companies like ours to move fast. Down the track, we expect larger companies to work off the back of some of the things we've done. But it's got to be done, and that's part of the reason why there's so much interest in it. "

Aviation H2 is not the only company working on ammonia-based aviation. Notably, the UK's Reaction Engines, the company behind the SABRE rocket engine, is working on a similar project. These guys appear to already have bench testing underway for their engine precoolers, and are working with hypersonic speeds in mind. Also, the University of Central Florida has embarked on a five-year ammonia aviation project in collaboration with Boeing, General Electric and other partners, funded by NASA to the tune of US$10 million.

Definitely an area to keep an eye on. Check out a video below.

Source: Aviation H2

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13 comments
James Barbour
How do you make ammonia? Via electricity. How do you make electricity? By burning coal. As such, this is not green. Nuclear fission is required to make green electricity which is required to make green ammonia.
Catweazle
Ammonia is not a primary fuel, like hydrogen or batteries it is in fact an energy storage medium, hence considerably less efficient than its precursors.
Looks like subsidy farming to me.
michael_dowling
James Barbour: Heard of something called renewable energy? It can be used to produce green ammonia,which can be used in aviation as well as a way to store excess renewable energy. As a fossil fuel,coal is rapidly being displaced by LNG,by the way,as it is more economical and cleaner than coal. And yes,nuclear is a good source of carbon free base load electricity.
1stClassOPP
I recall a few years ago we had a “bird banger” that ran off of carbide and water. Might there be some way to harness that energy to power a useful engine of some kind? I know the blast was quite powerful. I’m not sure about harmful results to the environment.
CommonSense
It is staggeringly amazing how ignorant people are about these things. They hear the word "clean" followed by anything and they assume they are saving the planet. Ammonia is produced by reacting fossil fuels and generates massive amounts of CO2! How is using it as a fuel in any way cleaner than just burning the fossil fuels directly?!?!? This is just another massive waste of research and venture capital by people with more money than brains.
Voice of Reason
@CoomonSense: You've missed the point of the article and the company name: Aviation H2.They are using ammonia as a more convenient way to handle green hydrogen than the gas itself, as stated in paragraph 4. They plan to convert green H2 using atmospheric N2 into ammonia. No fossil fuels required.
usugo
never mind, the production of nitrous oxides from combustion, and ammonia production being one of the most energy intense processes

NEXT!
ljaques
@Catweazle Yes, it appears to be an offshoot of the Big Oil franchises. What are the odds that this will be expanded into automotive engines and sold/distributed at existing gas stations? 1:1?
Unsold
@ James Barbour. Your choice regarding electricity generation by using carbon is arbitrary and not a fair argument. If they're scaling this up as a green project, they'll certainly go solar or wind or to your point nuclear. If they're creating conversion properties, a green energy source is probably already baked in. And to be fully helpful, you should weigh the long term cost of carbon jet fuels versus conversion fuel and THEN see if there's a smoking gun you can point to.

Shed light, not heat.
Michael Weidler
The issue with this idea is that there are a lot of better uses for "green" hydrogen than producing ammonia to displace jet-A. There are already several processes for making carbon neutral non-fossil jet-A. They just happen to be expensive. I can see ammonia for military planes - especially aircraft carriers. Make all fuel you need out of air and water.