Stralis is an Australian startup with great ambition and some pretty audacious ideas. Bob Criner, the firm’s Co-founder and CEO (with Stuart Johnstone who is also Chief Technical Officer or CTO), gives a quick overview of those ambitions and the unique solutions he and his team are developing.
Solutions include hydrogen-powered aircraft powered by fuel cells that are six times lighter than competing types. The certainly thinner, based on images from the company. Stralis has, “…filed our provisional patent application for our our high-temperature PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel stack design.” The firm has also been completing several rounds of fund raising from investors and building a customer base, with, “$263M in Letters of Intent from a range of customers across 5 countries,” for propulsion systems and aircraft.
Stralis HEPS (Hydrogen-Electric Propulsion System) is claimed to be one-sixth the weight of rival systems
Bonnie and Clyde
With the power system ready, the team created an airborne test bed (Bonnie) and a ground-based power systems test unit (Clyde) to demonstrate what their systems can do.
Stralis is using an H3X motor in Bonanza a demonstrator. Motor is power-dense and US made
The H3X motors installed in Bonnie and Clyde claim to 250 kilowatts (335 horsepower) from an 18 kilogram (39.6 pound) motor, making it the (claimed) highest energy density motor on the market. With light hydrogen tanks and ultralight fuel cells, the overall energy density for the system could very well rival fossil-fuel powered competitors.
Onto Bigger Things
Even bigger things are in store at Stralis, with a 15-passenger Beechcraft B1900D-HE retrofit. Stralis says, “Our 15-seat Beechcraft 1900D-HE aircraft is a hydrogen-electric retrofit solution that is gaining traction with airlines as a near-term solution with minimal refueling infrastructure impact. It will outperform current 19-seat conventional turboprops on cost per available seat (CASK) while meeting zero-emission targets.”
Stralis’ H2 powered Beech B1900 will haul 15 passenger on intermediate hop
