World’s first crewed liquid hydrogen plane takes off

thenextweb.com World’s first crewed liquid hydrogen plane takes off

At a somewhat small and unassuming airport in Maribor, Slovenia, German hydrogen propulsion startup H2FLY has quietly been building up to a major milestone in zero-emission aviation over the summer. And all the hard work has come to fruitio

World’s first crewed liquid hydrogen plane takes off::undefined

49 comments

While technically zero emission, 95% of hydrogen is created using natural gas reformation. It's really really disingenuous to say zero emission when it uses a huge amount of fossil fuels in the creation of the fuel

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-fuel-basics#:~:text=Today%2C hydrogen fuel can be,solar-driven and biological processes.
- The point is that, unlike kerosene, hydrogen can be made using clean energy
  
  The point is that, until electrolysis is cheaper than using natural gas, it will continue to be made with natural gas.
  
  It can be, but it takes a huge amount of power to do it, and the biggest hydrogen production method (reforming) produces GHGs itself
- Was this one though? It says they’re using Air Liquide, and here’s a quote FTA:
  
  Something else a future of clean-burning, hydrogen-powered aviation requires is — other than the actual fuel — is refuelling infrastructure. For Project HEAVEN, H2FLY has been working with Air Liquide.
  
  For the French industrial gas supplier, which is betting heavily on green hydrogen as part of the future energy mix, it is also about demonstrating viability and shoring up industry demand. “This is the very first time we have brought liquid hydrogen to be refuelled at a commercial airport,” said Pierre Crespi, Innovation Director at Air Liquide Advanced Technologies.
  
  (Emphasis mine) if it’s green hydrogen, doesn’t that mean it was made using clean energy (as opposed to gray hydrogen)?
  
  Air Liquide is the supplyer of the hydrogen. You have green and blue hydrogen. One is produced with reformation and carbon capture while the other one is produced with electrolysis. So, if the electricity is from renewable then it's technically zero emission.
  
  I wouldn't bet on a company telling you that they're using "green hydrogen" to be doing anything other than pulling the wool over your eyes. There's a reason the fossil fuel industry is heavily invested in hydrogen and pro hydrogen propaganda. Once you start noticing it becomes really obvious
That's not a new plane, that's the double fuselage version of Pipistrel Taurus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipistrel_Taurus

Pipistrel Taurus is a glider, first flown in 2004. There is an added benefit of using a glider for testing a new engine: gliders have a much better L/D ratio, so less power needed for longer flights, and if there is a malfunction they can land safely while gliding.
Oh, the humanity!
- Should have used helium. Works for balloons!
LEL for Hydrogen: 4.0 (% in air)
UEL is 75 %
This is the most severe (wide range) for any fuel.
LEL and UEL Explained (Explosive Gas) - Projectmaterials

This is on top to hydrogen enbrittlement and low temperature enbrittlement of metals.

Good luck with the insurance fees for commercial flights.
- Aviation is the one field, where burning some form of carbohydrate is actually the only viable option. Batteries may be an option for short flights, but I don't see any solution for long haul flights.
  
  Whether the fuel ends up being (synthetic) kerosene or some plant oil stuff doesn't really matter, the turbine isn't going anywhere.
  
  Yeah getting aircraft onto renewable energy is probably the lowest priority, if everything else was renewable it wouldn't even matter if they were never renewable.
  
  I agree...
  ( except for a small typo : it's carbohydride or hydrocarbon )
- I like how you just assume that we haven't advanced technology or safety features at all since the 1930s.
  
  It was a joke
- The space shuttle contain a huge reservoir of liquid hydrogen at very low temperature creating extremely difficult engineering stresses.
  So, insurance cost will be sky high if ever such planes take commercial flights.
  
  Well you know what else is explosive? Jet fuel!
  
  It also had 5 pressure vessels’ worth of liquid H2 for the fuel cells in the payload bay, sometimes more depending on the flight (and never had any issues wrt that, though of course it did present its own challenges). Challenger’s “failure mode” was in the SRB. The ET happened to be right next to it. We can talk about the ET and its direct impact on Columbia because the foam shedding was a problem with the ET. And of course, the issues with the NASA culture that were present for both.
  
  I’m not going to wade into the semantics of explosive vs flammable argument further down because at the end of the day it’s semantics.
  
  And I am an expert since you seem very intent on only experts partaking in this discussion.

You've viewed 49 comments.