Green Hydrogen from Scrap Metal and Water?

Dean Sigler Announcements, Biofuels, Fuel Cells, hydrogen, Hydrogen Fuel, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Can we make green hydrogen (or other energy sources) from scrap we otherwise throw away?  One of the frequently announced “breakthroughs” recurrently finding its way to our attention is that scrap food or farm waste has found its way to becoming aviation fuel, for instance.  United and Alaska Airlines have flown aircraft powered by biofuels produced from food waste by suppliers at SEATAC airport in Seattle, Washington. Hydrogen is undergoing a growth spurt.  The U. S. Department of Energy explains, “Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be used to store, move, and deliver energy produced from other sources.”  Green hydrogen seems to be an answer to many demands.  It comes from splitting water, and if produced through clean means, is a carbon neutral to carbon negative product. Stainless Steel Powder and Water Dr. Guy Ben Hamu, Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Sami Shamoon College of Engineering, explains the process uses H2 trapping, something usually related to …

Heart Aerospace, BAE Collaborate on Batteries

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

Heart Aerospace, a Swedish startup, has teamed with BAE Systems, a veteran British aerospace supplier, to help with powering its 30-seat, battery-powered airliner.  The four-motor craft will include a very large battery pack under the passenger compartment.  The need for safety should be obvious. Adding eleven seats to its original 19-seat platform, Heart also brings a turbo generator on board, enabling flights up to 400 kilometers (250 miles) with 30 passengers, or even 800 kilometers (500 miles) with 25.  These figures include normal airline range reserves. Partners include BAE Systems, Swedish aerospace group Saab, avionics supplier Garmin, and Aernnova, a Spanish airframe specialist. BAE’s UK-based group’s Controls and Avionics Solutions operation in upstate New York will oversee the batteries and their control and monitoring.   This fits BAE’s expertise, with more than 25 years of experience electrifying large, heavy-duty industrial vehicles with over 15,000 power and propulsion systems in service worldwide.  This will be critical considering the placement of the batteries. …

Delta and Joby: United and Archer and Eve

Dean Sigler Announcements, Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Delta and United Airlines are teaming with eVTOL makers Joby, Archer, and Eve – elevating ways to get to and from their airports.  The newly-formed alliances will make airline travel a little less tedious and eliminate the often long and sometimes frustrating drives between flights. Delta and Joby Delta Air Lines will invest $60 million in a partnership with Joby Aviation in return for a two-percent stake in Joby and a seat on its board. Joby can receive another $140 million if it meets “certain milestones.” The selling points of convenience and time saving could certainly entice prospective customers.  Initially set up as premium services in New York City and Los Angeles, passengers would still rely on automobiles or shuttles to get them from home or office to a heliport (eventually to be a “vertiport”).  There, the passenger boards a Joby five-seat tiltrotor aircraft and flies to the airport in around 10 minutes – a huge time saving over ground …

ZeroAvia Finds Widespread Interest, Challenges

Dean Sigler Announcements, Electric Powerplants, hydrogen, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

ZeroAvia is finding its way into the development of hydrogen-fueled aviation, and finding along its way great interest and challenges. ZeroAvia, now in Hollister, California, Cranfield, England, and Everett, Washington finds widespread interest in serving multiple clients, since its projects fit a wide dynamic range of exciting possibilities.  The three locations enable adhering to different certification requirements while meeting diverse challenges. Val Miftakhov, founder and CEO of ZeroAvia, has grand plans for his company and the clients it will serve. Otto Celera 500L Lurking on the sidelines of the Victorville, California airport for what seemed years, this craft was a great mystery with unspecified potential.  Now it’s flying with a 550 horsepower RED (Raikhlin Engine Development) V-12 Diesel powerplant and seems to fulfill the dictum that if it looks good, it will fly well. The bullet-shaped aircraft can fly for a mere $328 an hour, taking six passengers over 400 miles in that time.  Otto compares this to the $2,100 …

Take Heart!  United We Fly!

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Heart Aerospace, on the airport at Gothenburg Airport in southern Sweden, wants to bring inexpensive, four-motor electric flight to the masses.  With $35 million (29.4 million euros) in recently acquired backing, the small team at Heart is working toward making a 19-passenger, four-motor airliner a reality.  Their ES-19 is a single-aisle design with eight-rows of single seats and three-seat row at the cabin’s rear. Those 19 seats are a selling point, with United Airlines signing purchase contracts for 100 of the $ 9 million machines.  Mesa Airlines follows suit for another 100 and Finnair, Finland’s national airline, has expressed interest in another 20.  Funding from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and other investors totals over $35 million.  For a niche market, the possibilities are expansive, with many small airlines flying short routes ready for such a craft. Heart sees the 19-seat market as promising, since few 19-seat commuter liners exist anymore.  Part of that is economic, with small turboprops being …

Biofuels from Many Sources

Dean Sigler Biofuels, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

We’ve looked at an array of different biofuel sources ranging from used cooking oil and algae to farm and municipal waste.  This is essential as the percentage of airline emissions becomes a bigger part of our overall greenhouse gas situation.   The Guardian reports, “A 2017 estimate said air travel accounted for 2.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions, with the total emissions expected to quadruple by 2050.”We’ll look here at how some of the early efforts have panned out and examine a late-breaking surprise or two. Mustard Seeds? According to the Guardian, “A Qantas plane powered partly by mustard seeds has become the world’s first biofuel flight between Australia and the United States, after landing in Melbourne on [January 30, 2018].” A major test, the 15-hour flight used a blended fuel 10-percent of which came from the brassica carinata, a mustard seed used as a fallow crop between regular crop cycles. Qantas’ Boeing Dreamliner 787-9 “Reduced carbon emissions by 7 percent …

Farm and Municipal Waste to Bio Jet Fuel

Dean Sigler Biofuels, Diesel Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

United Airlines has united with two partners, AltAir Fuels and Fulcrum BioEnergy, to fly on sustainable alternative fuels.  Think of each flight being cleaner, using what formerly were unusable, land-fill-bound waste products, and certain to make United more sustainable, and flights less costly. Earlier efforts at producing biofuels relied on converting food, such as corn, into fuel, an uneconomical process that raised food prices and often used more energy than it produced in ethanol, for instance.  This was not sustainable and didn’t allow economic benefits for its users, so fell into disrepute quickly. Organizations like the United Nations spoke out against taking grains from the poorest among us to make fuels for jetsetters.  In their 2009 report, UNEP, the United Nations Environment Program, calculated that up to 34 percent of arable land would be required to produce the fuel necessary to maintain current     Powerful firms sometimes take farms from poor communities in third-world countries to produce biofuels, adding human misery …

Measuring Up To Standards

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

ASTM International, formerly known as the American Society for Testing and Materials, develops “international consensus standards” for many industries, using input from its members in many fields and disciplines.  Their D-7566-11 “Standard Specification for Aviation Turbine Fuel Containing Synthesized Hydrocarbons” governs what can be put into jet and turbo-prop aircraft.  Updated in July 2011, it now allows the use of biologically-derived fuel “without the need for special permissions,” according to SAE International, itself a standards organization, and as reported by Patrick Ponticel. United Airlines was quick to take advantage of the revised standard, using “Solazyme-supplied algae oil that was refined into jet fuel by Honeywell’s UOP division near Houston. The blend used for the November 7, Boeing 737-800 flight was 40-percent Solazyme’s Solajet and 60-percent petroleum-derived commercial jet fuel (Jet-A).” SAE explains that, “Under the ASTM standard, up to 50-percent bio-derived synthetic blending components can be added to conventional jet fuel. These renewable fuel components, called hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids …