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AeronauticsFirst successful test for Rolls-Royce’s hydrogen aircraft engine
In partnership with Easyjet, the manufacturer succeeded in replacing kerosene in a small plane engine. This proves that hydrogen “could be the zero-carbon fuel of the future”.
Rolls-Royce has succeeded in fueling a propeller aircraft engine with hydrogen instead of kerosene, a technology “still very experimental”.
DR
The British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce announced on Monday that it had successfully tested, in partnership with Easyjet, the supply of a propeller aircraft engine with hydrogen instead of kerosene, a technology still very experimental. It is the “world’s first test of a modern aircraft engine using hydrogen”, and it “marks a major step to prove that hydrogen could be the zero-carbon aviation fuel of the future,” argued the manufacturer.
Carried out over several weeks during the month of November, the test is “a decisive demonstration in the decarbonization strategies” of Rolls-Royce as of Easyjet, adds the press release. It took place in a British military test center in Salisbury (west London), on an engine normally used for small regional service planes. Transformed into an advanced demonstrator, it was powered by hydrogen in gaseous and “green” form – created from wind and tidal power.
The two partners intend to “prove that hydrogen can provide energy safely and efficiently to civil aircraft engines and are already planning a second series of tests”, with the test of a Pearl 15 as the key, a Rolls-Royce reactor.
“In the longer term, flight tests”
The engine manufacturer and the airline have “the ambition, in the longer term, to carry out flight tests”, they add. But to achieve this, companies will have to overcome technical challenges, particularly in terms of storage: liquid hydrogen, the least bulky form, must be maintained at -253°C. And even under these conditions, it is still four times more voluminous than kerosene, at an equivalent amount of energy.
“The test is a defining demonstration in decarbonization strategies.”
Another problem: hydrogen is difficult to obtain. The most abundant element on earth is not available in its pure state, but trapped in water and hydrocarbons such as natural gas. Green hydrogen is produced by electrolysis, i.e. the separation of oxygen and hydrogen from water using an electric current, itself obtained using renewable energies.
Other manufacturing methods exist, much more common, but they emit greenhouse gases, such as “grey” hydrogen, from natural gas, or even “blue”, with the same technique combined with a capturing part of the CO2.
(AFP)