The aviation industry is under pressure to deploy technological solutions to address the longstanding trend of increases in air travel. Paul Eremenko, a 41-old former chief technology officer for Airbus and United Technologies, suggests revisiting hydrogen to power aircraft in the future. Hydrogen has been largely considered dangerous, as it is highly explosive, and the tragedy that may result from accidents in its use was witnessed the world around during the Hindenburg disaster 80 years ago. However, the Hindenberg was covered in highly flammable Thermite, and as better ways to store and transport hydrogen are developed and deployed, fears may be ameliorated.
Hydrogen-powered fuel cells for aircraft have been tested by NASA, running small planes on them for years of experimental trials. Planes would require a hydrogen fuelling infrastructure that does not exist now — the same problem that has held back fuel-cell cars and the international shipping sector is now trying to address.
Eremenko’s startup, called Universal Hydrogen, has developed Kevlar-coated, pill-shaped pods — about 7 feet in length and 3 in diameter (2.13m x 0.9m) – filled with hydrogen, designed to double as a storage container for transporting the hydrogen, by truck, train or other means, and a gas tank when loaded into a plane. Each would hold about 208 gallons of water, and they can be stacked in racks so that 54 would fit inside a standard freight shipping container. “We want to basically turn hydrogen into dry freight,” said Eremenko, without the need for pipelines or similar infrastructure.
