Airbus shares updates on ZEROe hydrogen project

Exactly a year after announcing the ZEROe hydrogen program, Airbus has shared some further details on where it stands now. Behind the scenes, Airbus has been busy working on numerous technical sub-programs, concluded partnerships, and is now preparing the production of the first hardware, it said during the Aviation Summit in Toulouse on September 21-22. Airbus shares updates on ZEROe hydrogen project Flashback to September 2021. ZEROe was unveiled, consisting of three potential concepts: a 100-seater turboprop with a 1.000 nautical miles range, a 200-seater turbofan with 2.000 nm range, plus a futuristic blended wing design. The Airbus roadmap targeted an entry into service in 2035 and a program launch in 2027-2028. Between now and the program launch, the airframer would research and develop the various concepts, with the aim of doing the first flight of a demonstrator in 2025. In December, a fourth concept was added to the program: a 100-seater blended wing. A year later, Vice President ZEROe Glenn Llewellyn, said the blended wing is the least likely to make it into service into the 2030s, although from a hydrogen point of view it is the most interesting. Thanks to the blended wing, there is plenty of volume for the liquid hydrogen tanks that need to be big, as LH2 had four times the volume of kerosene. “But the change to this concept is too big for a single step.” Airbus showed a different concept of the blended wing ZEROe at the Airbus Summit, with V-tails and different engines. (Richard Schuurman) In the past year, Airbus opened Zero Emission Development Centers in Nantes and Bremen, where the tank technology will be developed. The site in Bremen benefits from the presence of Airbus Defense and Space and Arianespace, which brings decades of experience with liquid hydrogen to the program. Airbus also started partnerships with companies like Air Liquide and Vinci to establish what it calls the hydrogen ecosystem. A lot of work going into the hydrogen tanks Llwellyn shared the latest updates with AirInsight on where the three concepts stand: “We are doing a lot of work at the technology level, for example on the LH2 storage tanks. Those tanks are coming essentially from the automotive industry, which in fact developed those sorts of tanks. But we want to reduce the weight and we clearly need bigger tanks compared to what has been required in the automotive industry. So we started our roadmap of technology for aviation applications, together with several partners.” “We also created a joint-venture on fuel cells, which we announced in Q4 last year. We are taking again technology that is already good in the automotive industry and investing in that technology to take it really to the next level of performance, of power-to-weight ratio for our final applications.” “We have also been doing a lot of work with engine manufacturers. Hydrogen combustion is one of the key technologies that we are looking at. We want to fully understand what needs to be the changes in for example the combustor chamber, to the injectors associated with that kind of technology and bringing that technology to commercial aviation.” Direct combustion of hydrogen into the engine is one option. Using fuel cells to make electricity out of hydrogen and oxygen or a combination of both are also options that will take a lot of research. Last year, then-Chief Technical Officer Grazia Vittadini said that this needed further research, but that it would not make a lot of sense to bring heavy fuel cells on board if you could directly burn the LH2. Glenn Llewellyn says no decision hasn’t been made: “The trade studies that we are doing are still open, we have not concluded. There are a lot of options and combinations being studied. Some have been revealed in the four concepts that have been published, but there are many more behind the scenes that we are also studying. We are competing for each concept against the other in terms of performance, operating costs for the airlines. We really want to provide a product that allows airlines and passengers to reduce the climate impact of flying at the lowest costs. We believe that will be the way we will really have the biggest climate impact in a positive way.” Airbus is still undecided if the hydrogen should be directly burnt into the engines or used in fuel cells to generate electricity. (Airbus) The tank design is also still a work in progress: “They are all larger compared to what exists today in the automotive sector. Then it is a question of relative size for aviation applications. There are still studies ongoing about exactly the size we will have in the final product. We don’t need to make that decision yet, so we are not making it.” Next year, the first hardware will be made. “We are constructing quite a lot of hardware across all the different technologies that we are interested in. We plan to start ground testing next year of some of the technologies, including fuel tanks, subsystems of the propulsion system. Quite a lot of progress is happening and is going to take place over the next few years, ultimately targeting a flight demonstration of a propulsion system.” The first ZEROe will probably be a turboprop While the aircraft design itself hasn’t been decided, the ZEROe teams are working on that as well, says Llewellyn: “The design of the aircraft really needs to happen in parallel because you don’t have a clear sight of what the technology needs to do unless you know what your aircraft looks like. Simple things like how is the technology being integrated into the aircraft. If you only focus on technology, you don’t know that. You don’t even know some of the peripheral challenges that you could have. It is really important that we are developing the two in parallel. That’s why you see concepts being revealed, we talk about different aircraft configuration choices, technology development. And the third big stream is talking about the hydrogen ecosystem. Really those three components need to progress in parallel in order for the overall project to be successful.” Chief Commercial Officer Christian Scherer said during the Airbus Summit “that we will probably, probably start with the smaller kind of aircraft, the regional type of airplanes. It will be a long time before we will see hydrogen airplanes dominating the skies, but you have to start somewhere.” Glenn Llwellyn says: “That’s certainly the easiest option. We are still trying to figure out what would be the best option. If oy go for a turboprop, you might go for a smaller aircraft that might have a slightly smaller market than if you go for a larger turbofan. Christian is right that this is certainly one of the easier options, but the final decision hasn’t been made. What really defines the market are payload and range. CEO Guillaume Faury said that the 2035 target still fits the planning: “We started in 2019 to develop and to mature the technologies that are at stake and we are comparing of different solutions. We think that by 2025, we will have completed our work on technical maturation. Then it takes roughly two years to go from maturity to the launch of a project. You need to select your suppliers and the best solutions, put the funding in place, decide on the industrial set-up. Let’s say the launch of the program will be around 2027-2028. We need seven to eight years to go from launch to entry into service (EIS). That’s why 2035 is very fair and realistic respective of EIS of an airplane with that level of technological disruption.” “I am impressed with the momentum that is created around those technologies and around hydrogen. And every day, we are advancing and find a solution for that plane”, Guillaume Faury said. “The issue is 2027, when we have to launch major investments, not only at Airbus but with all our partners. We need to have a certain degree of certainty on the regulatory environment when we want to be certified. We need regulations for operating those planes in 2025 and of the availability of hydrogen at the right place, at the right time, in the right quantities, and at the right price. Actually, I am more concerned about this one. That’s why we are engaging so much with governments and the energy sector to understand and to trigger that there needs to be some certainty before we launch such a big program.” The new CFO, Sabine Klauke, said the Airbus has been spending hundreds of millions on ZEROe but was unwilling to share the number of engineers that are involved.

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