Airbus’ ZEROe engine works but needs some serious shrink-wrapping

Remember the pictures of the first computer the size of a big room? It’s the same for Airbus’ latest ZEROe hydrogen fuel-cell demonstrator engine. The countless components, plumbing, stacks, and electronics take up a significant part of the E-Aircraft System House (EAS) test facility on the Airbus Defence & Space site in Ottobrunn near Munich. But move fast forward three years, and the hydrogen fuel-cell engine should fit a normally-sized engine nacelle on the A380 flight test demonstrator aircraft. Just like how the room-sized computer nowadays fits into your smartphone. Airbus’ ZEROe engine works but needs some serious shrink-wrapping.

Airbus offered the media a chance to tour the test facilities and learn all about them on the second day of the Airbus Summit

this week. On Day 1 in Toulouse, the airframer said that significant progress had been made on developing a 1 Megawatt electric engine that uses hydrogen and oxygen in fuel cells to generate electricity. On Day 2, the media saw the real thing, called the fuel cell iron pod.

From huge cylindrical tanks outside the building, super cold liquid hydrogen flows into the fuel cells, where together with oxygen it enters multiple fuel cell stacks, each the size of a wardrobe. That’s on purpose, so that all the individual parts of the fuel cell are easily accessible. The fuel cell splits the hydrogen into water and electricity, which drives the motor control units and the electric motors, a gearbox, and finally a load box that simulates the engine’s propeller.