Your Jet May Become a Prop Plane Bombardier’s (Commuter Regional Jet) CRJ700 has been in service for over 21 years, and may be about to receive a power system that will make it one of the cleanest alternatives in air travel. According to electric-flight.eu, “American Airlines plans to convert most of its CRJ700 fleet to environmentally friendly engines,” particularly ZeroAvia’s ZA2000 RJ drive train, electrified by hydrogen fuel cells. American, a shareholder in ZeroAvia, operates a fleet of CRJ 700s through its American Eagle regional airline subsidiary. Converting the airplanes from their current General Electric CF34-8C1 to hydrogen-fueled ZA2000s will extend the lives of the planes and make them the cleanest things in the sky. Robert Isom, CEO of American Airlines, said: “To accelerate the transition of commercial aviation to a low-carbon future, investments in promising technologies, including alternative forms of propulsion, are required.” Val Miftakhov, CEO and founder of ZeroAvia, added, “At this early stage in our work together, …
Take These Batteries with Grains of Sodium
“The goal of the Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC), at the University of California San Diego Nanoengineering Department, is to design and develop new functional nano-materials and nano-structures for advanced energy storage and conversion applications.” Their focus on sodium (salt) batteries seems to promise much. UC San Diego is carrying out that mission with new and different approaches to creating “safer and less expensive alternatives to lithium ion batteries.” One such approach is commercializing an advanced sodium ion battery using a tin anode instead of hard carbon. Cost, of course, is a major factor in turning to sodium. OneCharge lists the comparative prices of lithium and sodium precursors as of June, 2023: Sodium carbonate costs approximately $290 per metric ton. Lithium carbonate (99.5% battery grade), on the other hand, commands a significantly higher price of approximately $35,000 per metric ton (even after a sharp decline since mid-July 2022). The same source notes sodium is 1,180 times more abundant in …
Next-Generation Battery Progress
Do we have “revolutionary” battery progress, or are the next-generation batteries we see proliferating more evolutionary? Progress has not been particularly speedy: your editor first saw Dr. Yi Chu at a 2009 electric aviation symposium, when he discussed the idea of achieving a “10X” battery within a few years. Following his tenure at Stanford University, he founded Amprius, which is now producing 500 Watt-hour per kilogram cells. This big jump in energy density is still short of his original goal, which was to have produced something around 1,000 Watt-hour/kilogram cells. MagniX Samson MagniX has been developing ever-larger electric motors for over a decade, and is now developing larger battery packs to power them. Their next-generation Samson batteries contain 300 Watt-hours per kilogram at the pack level, which means higher energy densities at the module and cell levels. The addition of a necessary battery management system (BMS) when cells assembled into modules or packs adds weight, but is necessary with lithium …
Wright ASCENDS
“The ASCEND program sets a benchmark of the fully integrated all-electric powertrain system at a power density of ≥ 12 kW/kg with an efficiency at ≥ 93%. Currently, these targets, among others, are beyond the capability of state-of-the-art technologies and will require creative thinking and innovation in the electric motor and power electronics space.” As shown below, the large Wright motors will be available in both ducted fan jet and turboprop configurations. Wright Electric, one of eleven organizations signed up for the ASCEND Program, is pushing forward on several projects encompassing the totality of electric propulsion. WM2500 Motor Jeffrey Engler started Wright Electric in 2018, with assistance from Yates Aerospace, a firm headed by record-holder Chip Yates. According to Wikipedia, “Two test stands were constructed: one with two 250 [kilowatt] (335 horsepower) UQM motors and two Hartzell Propellers,… the other on a 10,000 [pound] (4,500[kilogram]) trailer to be brought to high altitude test sites.” Yates had used the same UQM …
Helios to the Stratosphere
Miguel Iturmendi has been exploring the stratosphere and beyond in the Perlan 2 sailplane and his Helios Horizon electrically-launched craft. He flew in the Perlan 2 sailplane in 2018 to over 65,000 feet, and more recently took part in a demonstration flight in that aircraft. His ongoing efforts with the Horizon are increasing altitude records for electric aircraft. He lives in Florida, where he leads the Helios Horizon project and works on the aircraft, a modified Pipistrel Taurus electric motorglider. For record flights, he takes the craft to Minden, Nevada, where the Perlan 2 resides when it is in the States. The most recent flights took place near Bishop, California, a location for many historic soaring flights. The spring test campaign demonstrated several flights between 17,500 and 24,000 feet on battery power. The team never used more than 60 percent of the total pack’s energy, indicating future flights could go higher. (After all, you have a sailplane in which you …
Lilium and Whisper: Quiet Flyers
Two radical-looking electric aircraft, both quiet flyers, contrast in flight modes – eVTOL (electric Vertical Take Off and Landing), and eCTOL (electric Conventional Take Off and Landing). Germany’s Lilium and America’s Whisper Jet show their unique ways. Lilium Founded in 2015, Lilium, like most of its competitors, is less than a decade old, but already boasts 950 employees in four offices. The workers come from six continents and comprise 58 nationalities, a winner in any Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ranking. They make an impressive product. Lilium is an expensive machine, costing around $7 million plus. Its marketing approach seems to be toward the VIP set and its first locations are in cash-rich areas such as the French Riviera and along Florida’s eastern shoreline. Despite the glossy façade, there’s a solid array of engineering inside. Batteries One of the first questions your editor had on early versions of Lilium’s aircraft was where they hid the batteries. Recent news from the company …
Two Firms, Two Milestones
Two firms, one making both conventional take off and landing (CTOL) and eVTOL (electric Vertical Take Off and Landing) aircraft, and one making a CTOL capable of root-top operation, had major milestones in the last month. Beta Technologies Beta Technologies, founded in 2017 by Kyle Clark, developed its first craft. Ava underwent test flights and even at that point attracted its first customer, “United Therapeutics, which under founder and CEO Martine Rothblatt was looking for efficient transportation methods for organs intended for human transplant. United Therapeutics awarded Beta a $48 million contract” Finding Ava to be complicated, the Beta turned to a simpler approach. The resulting Alia was further developed into both conventional and eVTOL configurations. As a conventional, if rather swoopy-looking craft, Alia has flown along a network of charging stations created by Beta to provide overnight stays for pilots and an energy source for extended trips. The Alia demonstrated its ability to transition from a lift-off using the …
DARPA ANCILLARY Fields eVTOLs
DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has announced a competition for ANCILLARY (AdvaNced airCraft Infrastructure-Less Launch And RecoverY eVTOLs), or electric Vertical Take Off and Landing vehicles. (That’s about as tortured an acronym as we could cram into a lead paragraph.) The goal, to develop a Class 3 unmanned VTOL aircraft capable of flying all-weather missions from ships or land, has been responded to by several industry leaders. These have been winnowed to six “finalists” who will craft demonstration models of their respective designs. DARPA’s announcement includes the following: “The UAS would be able to launch and recover from ship flight decks and small austere land locations in adverse weather without additional infrastructure equipment, thus enabling expeditionary deployments. Unlike large VTOL systems, the small UAS size would allow many aircraft to be stored and operated from one ship creating a tactical beyond-line-of-site (BLOS) multi-intelligence sensor network capability.” The Six Finalists Phase Ia of the competition reduced the number of …
Hold Your Hydrogen – GTL Does
GTL. Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories Inc, is a specialist composite manufacturer and it validates LH2 composite dewar tanks for use in aviation. Recently, they shared that, “In-depth results from the successful validation testing of its small, subscale composite vacuum jacketed dewar tank with liquid hydrogen (LH2).” Think of a dewar as a large thermos bottle and you won’t be far from reality. “A cryogenic storage dewar (or simply dewar) is a specialized type of vacuum flask used for storing cryogens (such as liquid nitrogen or liquid helium), whose boiling points are much lower than room temperature. It is named after inventor James Dewar, who developed it for his own work. They are commonly used in low-temperature physics and chemistry.” (Wikipedia) The company explained, “Test results exceeded expectations regarding holding hard vacuum, heat load, rapid chill-down and hydrogen fraction goal, leading to flight prototype fabrication. “ The company reports, “When fully isolated, the dewar tank held hard vacuum at 2.8.e-6 torr (5.414e-9 psi) for …