Leading hydrogen plane startup is all of the sudden grounded

Unlike vehicles, most planes can’t merely change to utilizing batteries. The extra rapid options for slashing aviation emissions embody designing fuel-efficient jet engines, electrifying floor operations, and rising the usage of ​“sustainable aviation gasoline” — the overwhelming majority of which as we speak comes from used cooking oil and animal fat, however might ultimately embody ​“e-fuels” created from hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

However, whereas various jet fuels might be cleaner than petroleum-based gasoline, they nonetheless emit CO₂ when burned in engines. Hydrogen doesn’t, which is why airways and producers have poured tens of millions of {dollars} into creating H₂-powered plane. Most lately, in early June, the U.S. Congress handed a bipartisan invoice that directs the Federal Aviation Administration to analysis and develop methods for utilizing hydrogen gasoline inside the subsequent 12 months.

Hydrogen aviation efforts embody planes that both burn liquid hydrogen immediately or run gaseous H₂ via gasoline cells. With the latter, hydrogen flows into the fuel-cell system and spurs an electrochemical response that produces electrical energy. That in flip drives electrical motors and spins propellers. Unlike burning hydrogen or kerosene, utilizing gasoline cells doesn’t generate dangerous nitrogen oxides or positive particulate matter.

Universal Hydrogen’s prototype aircraft, a retrofitted Dash 8 mannequin, has a 1.2-megawatt gasoline cell and an 800-kilowatt electrical motor. It additionally stored one among its two standard oil-burning engines.

One different U.S. startup, ZeroAvia, has constructed and flown a hydrogen-fuel-cell aircraft. The California-based firm flight-tested a 19-seat plane almost a dozen instances final 12 months from a non-public airfield in England. ZeroAvia accomplished a $116 million Series C funding spherical in November, and its traders embody Airbus, United Airlines, and American Airlines.

Retrofitting a propeller aircraft with gasoline cells and liquid-hydrogen tanks would end in a almost 90 p.c discount in life-cycle emissions in comparison with the unique plane, based on a 2023 evaluation by the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit suppose tank. That’s assuming the hydrogen is made utilizing solely water and renewable electrical energy, not with fossil fuels, the best way almost all hydrogen is produced as we speak.

An absence of inexperienced hydrogen provides was one among many obstacles dealing with Universal Hydrogen, the Seattle Times story famous. So, too, have been the corporate’s plans to create new logistics infrastructure for delivering hydrogen, and the inconvenient actuality that storing hydrogen on planes takes up more room than standard jet gasoline, which reduces room for ticket-buying passengers.

Universal Hydrogen had additionally been working to retrofit a bigger regional aircraft, the ATR 72, at a facility in Toulouse, France, close to the place Airbus has its headquarters. The French unit of the corporate may even be liquidated, Cousin mentioned within the letter to shareholders.

Even if one other agency can crack the code and scale its know-how, aviation consultants say that as we speak’s gasoline cells aren’t able to producing sufficient energy to hold the big, long-distance plane which are accountable for the majority of aviation’s CO₂ emissions. But fuel-cell planes might nonetheless play a key position in lowering planet-warming air pollution for short-haul flights — and doubtlessly lay the groundwork for cleansing up the broader aviation market.