Companies are racing to crack the code on emissions-free air travel. Hydrogen is key to several options, each with promises and challenges.
Beyond a splashy paint job that included a big “H” on the tail, the 40-passenger turboprop jet that took off mid-morning March 2, from a small airport in central Washington, looked like any other regional airliner.
As bigger and bigger planes operate off such systems, hydrogen fuel cells increasingly are looking like feasible options to help the aviation sector clean up its act. There are still a number of hurdles for Universal Hydrogen and its competitors to overcome before commercial passengers might start riding in flights fueled entirely by hydrogen fuel cells, and multiple other options are still in the mix.
For many environmentalists, the most appealing alternative to making flights carbon neutral is fully electric jets, which would emit no carbon or other pollutants. But with current technology, batteries needed to power jets over any distance would be too heavy to be practical. So unless that technology changes dramatically, only small planes are likely good fits to become fully electric, with the potential for hybrid models in larger planes.
“We’re not betting on research and technology that may mature or may not mature,” he said. “We’re adapting existing technologies,” with hydrogen fuel cells already powering vehicles such as the Toyota Mirai. Now, he said, it’s just a matter of converting those technologies to the aerospace market.To make planes powered entirely by clean hydrogen fuel cells a reality, Namer said his company needed to crack the code on three key hurdles.
Universal Hydrogen, recently celebrated a successful test flight of the largest regional plane powered by pure hydrogen, with fuel cells substituting for fossil fuel-powered engines. This is a work space for the company’s employees housed in a hangar in Hawthorne on Wednesday, April 5, 2023. Those systems do take up substantial space, which means airlines need to remove a few rows of seats — and potentially lose some profits along the way. But, while he declined to give an exact figure, Namer said the price to convert the planes isn’t that much more than an airline’s cost to do typical overhaul and maintenance work.
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