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New Hydrogen Engine Test Shows Future of Aviation

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wed Oct 24, 2007 04:01 PM
from the put-it-in-a-car dept.
Technology Hardware
An anonymous reader writes to mention Boeing has successfully completed tests for the engine that will power HALE, the new prop plane that will be able to stay aloft for long periods of time. "The wünderengine, developed by the Ford Motor Company, went for three days under the simulated conditions of a 65,000-feet flight, which is definitely better than a Taurus and apparently exceeded their expectations on fuel economy. Chris Haddox at Boeing's Advanced Systems said that while it will be several years before HALE flies, the key to this aircraft is the propulsion system and this recent test was very promising."
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Submission: New Hydrogen Engine Test Shows Future of Aviation by Anonymous Coward
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  • Curious now... (Score:4, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:04PM (#21105209) Homepage Journal
    What sort of mileage does a Taurus get at 65000 feet?

  • But they Cannot Build a Fuel Efficient Car? (Score:3, Funny)

    by CodeBuster (516420) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:06PM (#21105227)
    The wünderengine, developed by the Ford Motor Company, went for three days under the simulated conditions of a 65,000-feet flight

    This must be why the average fuel economy of American cars continues to suck so much dirt, all of the engineers are working on high altitude aircraft engines for use in the upcoming (any day now) FLYING version of the Ford Taurus...yeah.

  • sounds like it will be a really hot technology (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 (568564) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:07PM (#21105233) Homepage
    New Hydrogen Engine Test Shows Future of Aviation

    Oh, the humanity!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by GenP (686381)
      Well, the alternative was Sex Panther but that was rejected for obvious flammability and sexiness reasons.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      While I did laugh, at that comment, let's remember that it's generally accepted now that the Hindenburg burned because of its highly flammable zinc skin, not because of the hydrogen fuel. In fact, hydrogen rises and evaporates so quickly that lives may have been saved because it didn't hang around and burn downward. A lot of people survived.

      • Re:sounds like it will be a really hot technology (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Mattintosh (758112) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:53PM (#21105805)
        The skin wasn't zinc, and it wasn't zinc that caused it to burn.

        The skin was cotton, and they painted it with aluminum/iron-oxide paint. Basically, liquid thermite. Poof!

        From the Wikipedia entry:
        The duralumin frame was covered by cotton varnished with iron oxide and cellulose acetate butyrate impregnated with aluminium powder. The aluminum was added to reflect both ultraviolet, which damaged the fabric, and infrared light, which caused heating of the gas.

        The explosion happened when it was trying to land during an electric storm. The cotton panels were held to the frame with rope cords which were not painted with the same metal-saturated varnish as the panels themselves. When they dropped the grounding cable during the landing approach, all built-up static from the panels jumped to the frame, sparking the "thermite" varnish. The rest is history.

        And you're right about how the use of hydrogen likely saved lives.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by hardburn (141468)

            Germany *had* to use hydrogen; the Allies, in part of the long pissing-contest that lead up to WW1, wouldn't let them have any helium.

            True enough. The main way get helium is to extract it from natural gas emitted from oil fields [wikipedia.org], such as the ones in Texas. Thus, the United States is one of the few countries with an abundance of helium.

            They had asked the United States for helium, but the US feared that the Zeppelins would be converted for war (a legitimate concern, since Hitler was already in power and

      • "A lot of people survived."

        More survived than died. IIRC, of the 100 or so people on board, only about 30 died. Almost all of the deaths were from jumping. When it caught fire, people panicked and jumped; the ground is what killed them. Almost everybody who rode the ship to the ground lived to tell their tale. It was a relatively slow and controlled crash, and the flames were all above the people and billowing upward. Try that with an jetliner.

        The reason the Hindenburg disaster is remembered so fer

  • Among other things... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by raddan (519638) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:09PM (#21105269)

    And despite its light appearance, the aircraft will be able to carry a 2,000-pound multi-sensor payload, plus a custom fender, flame stickers for an extra speed punch and/or synthetic leather finish.
    ... and say, a bomb.

    Hate to be the downer of the party, but that's the way our leaders think. Gain the "high ground."

    • And despite its light appearance, the aircraft will be able to carry a 2,000-pound multi-sensor payload, plus a custom fender, flame stickers for an extra speed punch and/or synthetic leather finish.

      ... and say, a bomb.

      You must be joking. Product diversification is the name of the game, and bombers sell for a lot more than prop-driven recon birds. Besides, carrying one Mk84 does not a bomber make.

      • most enemies are either primitive or made that way relatively quickly, add in a bunch of fiber glass and carbon fiber which keeps radar cross sections low, and flying at medium altitudes; yeah the thing would probably last a while. Don't forget that shooting at something like that is like walking around with a bull's eye painted on your back.

      • Re:They already have that. . . (Score:4, Interesting)

        by h2_plus_O (976551) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @07:45PM (#21107725)

        I suspect that, for the problem of ordinance delivery, the Military already has superior solutions to that problem.
        Yes, but they don't have ones that can hang around for a week and THEN do it (that we know of).

        The ability to, say... orbit above a cave mouth for days and light up someone's world with a few 500-lb bombs whenever they stick their head out is not currently available- the closest we have to this capability is predators (which can deliver a hellfire and can stay aloft for a while but not for a week). Task a couple of these to a mission and you could keep an asset overhead for as long as there's budget- which gets you a couple of things: Instant strike capability, the ability to call in tactical strikes from in-theater assets, the ability to guide in tactical precision munitions, and multiple-strike capability from the same asset (2000 lbs is a ton of hellfire missiles, as it were- or one really big bomb, or any arrangement of 100, 250, 500, 1000- or 2000-lb bombs).
  • Would've never guessed that fuel efficiency was prized more by military than civilian customers. Or is there some subsidy for "green" fuels in some Defense appropriations bill?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Radon360 (951529)

      Maybe it's a logistics thing. You can essentially produce hydrogen on-site from an electrical generation power source, say a nuclear reactor onboard an aircraft carrier. Instead of having a carrier resupplied with jet fuel, av-gas or whatever from a supply ship, they just make what they need onboard. Improved fuel efficiency then just helps sell the idea.

      Not saying that's the reason, just speculation on my part.

      • But also a strategic thing. Destroying every oil well in the US is easy, destroying every farm is not. That means the enemy can't destroy the fuel supply if it comes from farms.

        Besides, wars are won first and then started. You can never plan too much ahead, and oil is bound to run out eventually. Sure, it's many years away, but wars have been known to last for decades, even a century. It's a good idea to say to your enemies "our systems will last longer than any war you can throw at us; attrition is pointle
      • Just a wild guess here but at 65,000 feet it gets mighty cold, and most fuel get pretty thick when it gets mighty cold, but most aircraft don't stay up there long enough to let the insulated fuel tanks get cold. This aircraft on the other hand is going to stay up there a long time, so they would have to use engine heat to keep the fuel warm enough to pump, but engines that make a lot of waste heat aren't very efficient, and have a big IR signature! So the obvious answer is to use hydrogen which wouldn't gum

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Cussin_IT (1143215)
      Actualy, I think this has more to do with weight ratios. A vehicle with a highly efficent motor will go farther and require fewer support stops than with an inefficent motor, even though they (vehicle+fuel)weigh the same. For unmanned vhicles, this means fewer support personel on the ground being shot at, leading to fewer injurys. Honestly, if the milatary is going to work at something, fewer friendly injurys is a worthy goal.

      • Actualy, I think this has more to do with weight ratios.
        All I know is, a five-ounce bird can not carry a one-pound coconut!

  • yeah right, hydrogen is gonna save us! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by victorvodka (597971) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:14PM (#21105317) Homepage
    Hydrogen! Yay! It's everywhere - heck, water is 2/3rds Hydrogen - meaning it is safe and plentiful and when you burn it all you get is water! But then the question becomes: how does one go about making Hydrogen from water? At this point the answer is based soundly in the same thermodynamics that condemns us all to a second stone age: LOTS AND LOTS of energy, my friend, meaning hydrogen solves nothing. Hell, it's not even easy to store the corrosive stuff.

    • Re:yeah right, hydrogen is gonna save us! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by benjfowler (239527) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:22PM (#21105445)
      It may not always be a major issue. Future generations of nuclear reactors [wikipedia.org] are likely to be designed specifically to operate at extremely high temperatures, good for producing enough process heat to thermochemically generate lots of hydrogen relatively cheaply.
    • But then the question becomes: how does one go about making Hydrogen from water? At this point the answer is based soundly in the same thermodynamics that condemns us all to a second stone age: LOTS AND LOTS of energy, my friend, meaning hydrogen solves nothing.

      Hydrogen power is the environmentally friendly codeword for nuclear power. It's a hoax and the greens are eating it up. Face it, it's just a fancy battery.

      Personally I think nukes are the way to go so I don't complain ... much.

      • Right now, I think most hydrogen fuel is acquired through reactions using fossil fuels.

        I wouldn't say that hydrogen's storage and transportation problems are insurmountable, it doesn't really have the same returns per volume and weight (when considering the entire storage unit) as other fuels. Coming up with better ways to burn it doesn't really help the other issues in the chain.
    • Given that their plans are all up in the air, it probably will never fly as a fuel source
    • Well, I'll leave off the obligatory DHMO link for once. But:

      heck, water is 2/3rds Hydrogen
      Water is significantly less than 2/3 Hydrogen -- much closer to 1/16 Hydrogen. I know you were joking, but this is important when we think about what to do with all the waste.

      For every 1 kilo of hydrogen used as fuel, we'll produce 16 kilos of solid waste! (It'll become solid quickly at those altitudes.)
    • But then the question becomes: how does one go about making Hydrogen from water?

      Military Check list

      Step 1: Powersource - Nuclear Reactor on Aircraft carrier - check!
      Step 2: Electrolysis from water - We're on the ocean - check!
      Step 3: Tanks to store it on - Hey we could use this jet engine fuel storage - check!

      • If you switch to hydrogen you need an infrastructure to manufacture and distribute it. So who do you trust to do that?

        The invisible hand of the free market, like everything else in America, that's who. Why, if a whole bunch of hydrogen blows up due to short-sighted cost-cutting measures, we'll know to buy our hydrogen from the other guy!

        Nah, I'm just kidding. We'll just have to make sure that Congress and the President regulate hydrogen as effectively as they have oh I give up, we're fucked.

  • Great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Colin Smith (2679) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:17PM (#21105367)
    How much energy does it take to produce the hydrogen?

    Hydrogen is not an energy source, it's an energy storage system, and not a very good one.

     

    • How much energy does it take to produce the hydrogen?

      While not the most efficient process imaginable, electrolysis will do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water/ [wikipedia.org]. Some claim 50 - 70% efficiency. Your high school physics teacher should have been able to demonstrate it easily with supplies one could buy from a local hardware store.

      Though yes, ultimately it isn't the greatest solution, as of you'll never get back 100% of the energy you put in. So even once you obtain the hydrogen, and then combust it with atmospheric oxygen, there will b

    • Hydrocarbons are really also just an energy storage system.
      • Your bit of genius aptly neglects that fossil fuels store energy from ages ago. Not energy we have to generate or capture today.

        C//
    • How much energy does it take to produce the hydrogen?

      That won't matter much anymore as soon as we have those portable 100GW cold fusion reactors available :-P

      Maybe it'll turn out to be easier to just keep the oil-combusting engines but re-implement photosynthesis using large-scale technology though!

  • Old dreams, new achievements (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mutatis Mutandis (921530) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:24PM (#21105461)
    For aircraft developers, the advantage of hydrogen has always been that it delivers more energy per weight unit than traditional hydrocarbon fuels. The matching disadvantage is that because of its low density, it is much bulkier, so requires bigger and heavier fuel tanks. Temperature is also an issue with pro and cons. On the one hand, LH2 is very cold, so ice formation on the skin of the aircraft can be an issue. On the other hand, LH2 is still chemically stable at high temperatures that would turn fossil fuels into a nasty sludge, or even break down hydrocarbon molecules before they can be properly burned. All that always made LH2 a very suitable fuel for a big rocket or for the hypothetical Mach 4 space plane. Its use on a slow high-altitude UAV poses very different challenges.
  • The best thing about moving to a hydrogen fuel, is that it can be produced by all of our energy production. So when the fossil fuels run out, we can keep using our technology with the nuclear plants generating the gas, as well as the hydrogen and electric hybrids that look very promising. (Zeppelin jokes aside).

    Though for this to be a realistic goal, we (America) need to start building new plants now, to the scale of France. And funding fusion research as well wouldn't hurt. At this moment, Nuclear energy
    • There are 30+ nuclear power plants working their way through early design and regulatory paperwork in the U.S. It remains to be seen how many actually get built. The energy bill passed a year or two ago dangled 2 billion in government backed loans to build nuclear power plants. The nuke industry wants that to be upped to $60 billion. The big nuke companies, GE and the big power companies, are liking the idea but they want the American tax payer to give them all the capital to build them for basically no
      • The other problem is the U.S. doesn't exactly have a permanent place to dump all the nuclear waste already in temporary storage unless Yucca Mountain gets going. There is already 77,000 tons of spent fuel in temporary storage, all of which has to be shipped to Yucca mountain.

        Correction, partially spent fuel. America does not reprocess its fuel. If we did that, we would reduce the amount significantly. And the resultant waste would not only be "hotter", reducing alot faster, but it could theoretically be u

    • Though for this to be a realistic goal, we (America) need to start building new plants now, to the scale of France .

      It's a good idea, but don't phrase it like that in public, or you'll find sizable grassroots political opposition. I mean, France? Don't they just eat cheese and surrender?

      Now, if you translate the gains into "hours of porn surfing/Xbox usage," you'll get your votes.

  • You know what other aircraft was hydrogen powered? THE HINDENBURG! *hides under the desk*
  • Hydrogen fueled engine in the stratosphere for days at a time, eh?

    So we're talking injecting tons of water vapor into the stratosphere - where it can produce long-lasting high-altitude clouds.

    They'd be thin. But they'd do a DANDY job of reflecting sunlight.

    Cloud reflectivity is a FAR greater forcing function of temperature than greenhouse gas.

    So use of this plane could cause significant (wait for it) ...

    GLOBAL COOLING!

    Ice ages! Oh, Horrors!
  • TFA is light on details. You might be interested to know that this is a hydrogen-burning internal combustion engine, not a hydrogen fuel cell.

    BMW has also been developing hydrogen ("Wasserstoff") burning internal combustion engines: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/09/12/bmw-officially-announces-the-bmw-hydrogen-7 [autobloggreen.com]

    Due to the sky-high price of fuel cells, the good ol' internal combustion engine might turn out to be the most practical way to use hydrogen fuel, for the forseeable future.

  • 65,000-feet flight, which is definitely better than a Taurus...

    Heck, I'm surprised a Taurus can go 12 miles without a breakdown...

    Because we all know that FORD stands for Found On Road Dead.

    (Ducks!)

    Thanks, folks, I'll be here all day...

    • Re:hydrogen combustion at 65,000 feet? (Score:4, Informative)

      by russ1337 (938915) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @04:27PM (#21105499)

      But this of course requires oxygen to happen. Is there much oxygen available at 65,000 feet?
      From ask a scientist [anl.gov]

      Question - Does air composition change with altitude in the Troposphere?

      Is oxygen concentration different at an altitude of e.g. 10000m than at sea level?
      -----------------
      The composition of the atmosphere remain relatively constant up to the ozone layer at an altitude of around 60,000 feet (though that number does vary somewhat).
      So, it appears the composition of air is relatively similar at high altitude, just there is LESS of it ... i.e the air is too thin to support most life.... Of course you can compress it so it becomes breathable, which is essentially what a commercial aircraft does to keep the passengers alive.

    • Remember that the combustion of hydrocarbons (Jet fuel) also requires oxygen, too.

      Part of the way engines work at that altitude, in particular turbine engines, is that they densify the air coming into the combustion area by compressing it, thus getting more oxygen into the combustion area. Water is also a resulting product of burning hydrocarbons, too (you combine oxygen not only with the carbon atoms, but also with the hydrogen atoms). I don't exactly know how this is handled or tolerated at such low

      • I don't exactly know how this is handled or tolerated at such low temperatures, but I'm willing to bet that between the latent heat expelled from the engine and the fine dispersement (atomization - to use a common, but incorrect term) that the resulting water doesn't pose any problem.

        You just described a Contrail [wikipedia.org]

        I guess these don't pose a problem unless they appear in the background of the medieval era film your watching.

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