Aircraft

ZeroAvia plans first commercial hydrogen flight, and 76-seat airliner

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ZeroAvia is planning the first commercial flights for its 19-seat hydrogen airliner for 2024
ZeroAvia
ZeroAvia is planning the first commercial flights for its 19-seat hydrogen airliner for 2024
ZeroAvia
In partnership with Alaska Airlines, ZeroAvia is now working on the largest hydrogen airliner project to date
ZeroAvia

Hydrogen aviation pioneer ZeroAvia has announced its biggest zero-emissions H2 aircraft yet: a 76-seat airliner it's building with Alaska Airlines and hoping to fly in 2023 – as well as its commercial H2 flight between London and Rotterdam in 2024.

These groundbreaking commercial flights will cover the 200-mile (320 km) distance between London and Rotterdam The Hague airport carrying 19 people, and at this stage it looks like they'll be the first commercial, international hydrogen flights in the world. This will be a significant moment, as the airline sector needs hydrogen powertrains if it's to begin decarbonizing air travel.

ZeroAvia also announced its collaboration with Alaska Air Group to develop a monster 76-seat hydrogen airliner, significantly larger than the 40-seat Dash-8 that Universal Hydrogen is working on, or the 40-seat Dornier 328 being developed by H2Fly and Deutsche Aircraft.

The new plane, a De Havilland Q400 turboprop, will be retrofitted with ZeroAvia's biggest hydrogen powertrain yet, designated the ZA2000 and capable of scaling between 2-5 MW of power output, depending on configuration. "We'll have first ground tests of that next year, and the first flight, probably in 2023," ZeroAvia's Val Miftakhov tells us over a video call.

The Q400 in standard trim can be specified to carry up to 90 passengers, and a tank of jet fuel can deliver a range up to 2,040 km (1,268 miles). The hydrogen version will carry 76 passengers, and its target range is closer to 800 km (500 miles). But while there are definitely compromises to be made, such an aircraft will still be able to decarbonize many well-traveled routes where green hydrogen refueling facilities can be rolled out.

In partnership with Alaska Airlines, ZeroAvia is now working on the largest hydrogen airliner project to date
ZeroAvia

"500 miles of range with a full passenger payload, that's pretty decent," says Miftakhov. "It covers the vast majority of the legs these aircraft fly. It's less than half their maximum fuel range, but it'll still be a successful commercial aircraft."

In order to get that range figure up closer to the fossil-fueled status quo, ZeroAvia will need to move to higher-density fuel in the form of cryogenic liquid hydrogen, and the company is working concurrently on a liquid hydrogen powertrain it hopes to begin testing next year.

Miftakhov is not daunted by the challenges of using liquid hydrogen. "Well, it's rocket science," he tells us. "But it's rocket science that's been done, right? We're actually working with a couple of partners on that, we'll have some liquid hydrogen tests later this year. We'll see if those will be flight tests, or ground tests of the flight hardware, but it's a matter of timing; if it's not next year, it'll be the year after. 2026 is our target for that as a commercial product."

These hydrogen aircraft are unlikely to run buffer battery systems, says Miftakhov. "For fixed wing aircraft – at least, for turboprops – our approach is not to have any batteries at all," he tells us. "The power ratio for jets, especially regional jets, is higher, and there you start maybe thinking about what we might do on the battery side. But the batteries are not that great, there's not what we'd call a dramatic improvement in power density relative to advanced fuel cell systems.

"Our targets for the fuel cell systems in these aircraft are anywhere between 1.5-2 kW/kg in terms of power density. You need to use pretty fancy batteries to beat that. They tend to be either heavy or volatile, and you don't get a lot of cycles out of them. And from the cell level to the system level, you have something like a 40 percent mass overhead from things like the BMS, the fire suppression, the cooling, and the separator walls you need to isolate the cells so they can't take out the whole battery if they catch fire. Our ideal situation is if we just don't have any batteries at all."

It's early days yet, but as stated before, green hydrogen's pretty much the only technology promising to deliver a useful range for zero-emissions commercial airliners. So it's great to see things starting to accelerate, and we look forward to seeing these machines in action.

Source: ZeroAvia

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4 comments
FB36
True solution for making ALL aircraft carbon-neutral is, all countries start producing biodiesel/biofuel at large scale (from all possible industrial/agricultural/forestry waste/biomass, trash, sewage)! & It is definitely NOT filling skies & airports w/ massive moving bombs!
(Not to mention, such solution would also make heavy trucks, trains, ships, tractors, tanks etc also carbon-neutral!)
guzmanchinky
Now people will say "but it's Hydrogen, it will EXPLODE!" without the knowledge that in order to make a plane like that explode, it would have to hit the ground at an angle and speed where no one survives anyway. And where a normal plane explodes as well...
I'm excited to see where this electric aviation goes...
Spud Murphy
The problem is, green hydrogen facilities won't be rolled out, they will run these things on fossil hydrogen for at least the next few years because it's much cheaper to do that than build solar and wind turbine arrays and big, expensive electrolysers on-site. This will result in increased aircraft emissions, not a decrease. We need a mandatory requirement that green hydrogen facilities must be built to provide all fuel for such aircraft BEFORE any H2 aircraft are allowed to be put into service. The fuel source, and the really woeful fuel cycle efficiency, are the two greatest problems of H2 vehicles, and neither are easily overcome. But, as batteries get better and cheaper, H2 vehicles will become uncompetitive and will all end up getting scrapped or converted to batteries anyway.
Towerman
@ Spud Murphy
And that's precisely where your priorities seems to be flawed.
It only fuels the reason to move over to hydrogen sooner rather than later.
The sooner we start the quicker we can evolve the hydrogen industry to be affordable and green. Delaying this process only kicks the can down the road. ICE technology is old cumbersome, and have run it's course, it's time to bury these huge and heavy mechanicaly complex and maintenence prone machines. Electric is the Only future.
@guzmanchinky
Exactly my thoughts ! Hydrogen power is one of the next revolutionary power sources