ZeroAvia Cryo-Compresses Hydrogen

Dean Sigler Announcements, Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, Fuel Cells, hydrogen, Hydrogen Fuel, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

ZeroAvia, already deploying hydrogen as a main part of its flight program, is exploring the use of cryo-compressor technology to deliver more energy dense H2 for longer flights. If we think of gasoline or Diesel fuel as “Cream of Energy Soups,” we might understand their preeminence as energy carriers.  A U. S. gallon (3.8 liters) of Gasoline for instance, contains about 33.4 kilowatt-hours of energy.  Compare this to a state-of-the-art lithium battery, which tops out at around 0.5 kW-hrs.  A Diesel engine might be able to convert 50 percent of that to useful work, with the rest going to waste heat.  A gasoline engine fares even worse, extracting perhaps 30 percent as work and 70 percent as waste heat. Electric Motors, however, are highly energy efficient, some extracting up to 97 percent of a battery’s stored energy.  If one uses hydrogen instead of batteries, one can reach parity with the amount of energy available to spin the propellers.  As early …

Wright Electric Goes Agricultural

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation 2 Comments

Following its announcement of a range of battery packs last month, Wright Electric shares information about its one-megawatt motor powering an Embraer agricultural airplane.  Teaming with Axter Aerospace, a Spanish firm with a history of providing backup electric power for otherwise conventionally powered aircraft; Wright helps make crop dusting a safer enterprise.  This eight-year-old video shows Axter’s early efforts with a small Tecnam aircraft.  (Note: you might want to turn on the closed captioning.) Low-level flying necessary for dusting or spraying crops requires utter reliability, so a proven turbine backed up by a high-power electric motor seems like an ideal combination for those circumstances.  The combined power of 800 kilowatts (1,072 horsepower) allows carriage of a large payload, sufficient power to avoid obstacles, and redundancy to prevent sudden letdowns. The electric motor has been tested to 1.2 kilowatts (1,608 horsepower), so could provide adequate power even if the turbine failed.  Failure of either power source is highly unlikely in any …

Diamond’s eDA40 and its Electric Ambitions

Dean Sigler Batteries, Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

Austria’s Diamond Aircraft launched its eDA40 last year, headed toward becoming “The first EASA/FAA (European Aviation Safety Agency/Federal Aviation Agency) Part 23 certified electric airplane with DC fast charging. Electric Power Systems’ DC fast charging system is capable of turning around a depleted aircraft in under 20 minutes.” Austria’s Diamond Aircraft has been developing environmentally responsible aircraft for the last several decades, starting with the hydrogen fuel cell-powered HK-36 in 2008.  Diamond promoted its work with Boeing Phantom Works as emitting nothing more than waste heat and water vapor, demonstrating “technology that may result in cleaner APU’s (auxiliary Power Units) for commercial aircraft of the future.” Diamond went beyond that over the next decade, using the HK-36 as a testbed for various hybrid and electric power variants.  In 2018, things had evolved to the HEMEP (Hybrid Electric Multi Engine Flying), a serial hybrid with two Siemens (now Rolls-Royce) motors on nose-mounted stalks powered by an internal combustion engine in the …

Electrifly-In Bern 2022 – The Year of the Hybrid

Dean Sigler Batteries, Biofuels, Diesel Powerplants, Electric Aircraft Materials, Electric Powerplants, Fuel Cells, GFC, Hybrid Aircraft, hydrogen, Hydrogen Fuel, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Electrifly-In Bern 2022 is a new location after five years at Grenchen, Switzerland.  The Electrifly-In moved about 25 miles down the road to Bern’s bigger airport.  Started by the designers of the SmartFlyer, an innovative hybrid touring craft, the event was originally called the SmartFlyer Challenge. Organizers have the serious intent of saving aviation from the “shame” that has come to accompany flight itself.  “Aviation is pilloried by the public. Flying is seen as the main problem of the climate catastrophe and everyone who books a flight should have a guilty conscience and is labeled as a climate sinner. The social and political pressure to phase out combustion technology is steadily increasing worldwide. So the question is no longer if, but when electrically powered aircraft will become the norm.”  This year, the fly-in offered the public several defenses against sin and shame. Beginning with the original namesake, the Smartflyer SFX1 was on display in the hangar, its carbon-fiber blackness showing …

Piper Archer Trainers to Go Electric

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CAE, a Canadian high-tech company, H55, Safran, and Piper Aircraft have announced a joint venture to make the popular Piper Archer® trainer electric.  With 28,000 Archers in service, a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) would replace the current Lycoming IO-360 or Continental CD-155 Diesel engines with a Safran electric motor. The Players CAE CAE, started 75 years ago by a Canadian war hero, pledges itself to making the world a safer place.  “Our vision is to be the worldwide partner of choice in civil aviation, defense and security, and healthcare by revolutionizing our customers’ training and critical operations with digitally immersive solutions to elevate safety, efficiency and readiness.” The organization runs large flight training programs and designs and operates banks of flight simulators.  It plans on converting 60 percent of its Piper fleet worldwide to electric power. This is all part of a larger environmental and social program as reported in their Annual Activity and Corporate Social Responsibility Report.  “To further …

Nine Engines and Two Wings – the DEP Antonov

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Sporting no less than nine powerplants, eight of which are electric, a cold-war biplane stunned the crowd at a Russian air show.  Part of the 15th International Aviation and Space Salon MAKS 2021 held on July 20-25, a Siberian adaptation of a Russian classic drew widespread attention.  Your editor has had the privilege of enjoying two flights in the original giant AN-2 biplane powered by a Schwezow ASch-62IR nine-cylinder radial engine with 1000 horsepower.  That engine sounded like a freight train grumbling through the valley over which we flew.  This new version has a 1,100 shaft horsepower Honeywell turbine in the nose and eight motors with folding propellers arrayed along the lower wing.  The sound is futuristic, while the airframe is anachronistic. Electric-Flight.eu headlines its coverage with, “Russians impress with blown-lift technology on old double-deckers.”  Think of an imposing biplane standing almost 14 feet tall, carrying a total wing area of 71.52 square meters (769.8 square feet) and hauling 12 …

Valuable Materials and Fuels from Trash

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The Earth we inhabit struggles in an ever-tightening race between being overcome with its own trash and cleaning up after itself.  Two stunning approaches to turning trash and waste into valuable materials and fuels could help us win that race. Graphene Dreams in a Flash Bigthink.com leads with the news that, “Graphene typically costs $200,000 per ton. Now, scientists can make it from trash.”  This “insanely useful” product is difficult to produce, making it a luxury for many applications – until now. Graphene is insanely useful, but very difficult to produce — until now.  Dr. James Tour and his Rice University students have created a way to produce graphene in large quantities in a literal flash.  This technique, Flash Joule Heating, was discovered in Dr. Tour’s laboratory by graduate student Duy Luong.  Also the lead author on the paper in the journal Nature, Luong “Did not expect to find graphene when he fired up the first small-scale device to find …

Two Wood Aircraft Leading to the Future

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Hydrogen Fuel, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Two French manufacturers are reverting to bois et toile (wood and fabric) for ultra-modern aircraft.  Both of their aircraft will be electrically powered, and both will use non-traditional approaches to construction.  In the meantime, both have fairly traditional demonstration models. The French have done wonders with wooden aircraft from the very beginning of aviation.  Santos Dumont built the petite Demoiselle with bamboo longerons, for instance, and Henri Mignet crafted his diminutive Pou du Ciel (flea of the sky, or flying flea) from available wood.  After World War Two, Messrs Joly and Delemontez fashioned a small single-seater, the Jodel D-9, from wood and ply and powered it with converted VW Kubelwagen engines, Jeep-like German vehicles which littered scrap yards and former battlefields.  Avions Mauboussin and Aura Aero use more modern power systems and vastly different approaches to bois and toile structures. Mauboussin Mauboussin goes back to prewar times with small aircraft that look as though they could have come from a …

eCSTOL: Longer Range Commutes on Less Power

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, SAS, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Competition is growing in the electric Vertical Take Off and Landing market, with 407 potential builders listed in eVTOL News.  Vertical flight takes power, though, and with available batteries limiting range, most such vehicles can make only short hops.  Alternatives that allow speedier, longer flights, in the form of electric Conventional Short Take Off and Landing (eCSTOL) aircraft are in development. Such craft offer the benefit of requiring less power for takeoffs and climbs, being more aeronautically-based than power-based.  Airflow, for instance, claims operating costs for their eCTSOL craft is one-third that of an eVTOL or helicopter. We will look at three eCSTOL craft that seem to making headway at this time.  The infrastructure (in two cases below) to support their flight may already exist. Airflow Curt Epstein, writing in Future Flight, under the headline, “Infrastructure Needs for eSTOL and eVTOL Aircraft May be Closer than Imagined,” notes the “intense study” being undertaken.  Speaking at the Vertical Flight Society’s  Electric …

Erik, Eric, Dr. Anderson, Verdego and Hybrid Power

Dean Sigler Batteries, Biofuels, Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

In a recent AVWeb Vodcast, Paul Bertorelli interviewed Embry Riddle’s Dr. Pat Anderson on the topic, “Why Electric Airplane Designers Are Turning to Hybrid Drives.”  Battery energy-carrying capability has not fulfilled its promise yet, according to Anderson.  The difference in energy density between fossil fuels and batteries is still too great to fulfill missions involving more than small craft and short distances for the most part.  This outlook caused Dr. Anderson’s associates, Eric Lindbergh and Eric Bartsch to form Verdego Aero, dedicated initially to developing a Diesel-hybrid generator system. They corroborate Dr. Anderson’s sense of current battery technology, their web site answering “Why hybrid?”  They explain, “Electric aircraft are at the forefront of aviation technology, but the energy density of current batteries isn’t yet high enough to support many mission types or aircraft designs.  The power generation systems in the VerdeGo IDEP (Integrated Distributed Electric Propulsion) systems, which use Continental Jet-A Piston Engines, offer 4-8x the equivalent energy density of today’s …