IDTechEx: why LAX, LAS, and LHR airports should invest in liquid hydrogen

IDTechEx’s new report, ‘Sustainable Future Aviation 2025-2045: Trends, Technologies. Forecasts’, finds the hydrogen airplane market will be worth US$28.4 billion in 2045. The largest part of this will be coming from hydrogen-powered narrow-body commercial airliners. However, this can only happen with strategic infrastructure investment at the right airports.

Hydrogen is a promising option for the future of aviation. Unlike batteries, it has enormous gravimetric energy density, allowing the plane to carry plenty of energy without becoming too heavy. The limitation of hydrogen is its volumetric energy density. Because hydrogen is light, it occupies far more space than jet fuel for the same amount of energy. At room temperature and pressure, a hydrogen tank would need to be more than 3000 times the size of a jet fuel tank to hold the same energy.

Compressing hydrogen helps to get more energy into a smaller volume. Most companies looking at compressed hydrogen are considering 700 bar. Pressurising hydrogen to 700 bar increases its density by a factor of 470, meaning the tank needs to be just over 7 times bigger for the same energy, but also that anybody looking to make use of hydrogen will need to invest in 700 bar hydrogen refuelling infrastructure.

Liquid hydrogen (LH2) is even more dense. At 71g/l, it still weighs 10x less than jet fuel for the same volume but now contains approximately 25% of the energy. So now, if a plane could be refuelled with liquid hydrogen and got similar efficiency out of the engines, it could expect to get around 25% of the range. For something like an Airbus A320, or Boeing 737max, this would mean around 1500 km of range. This might not sound like much, but a surprising amount of flights are less than 1500 km.

IDTechEx’s report, ‘Sustainable Future Aviation 2025-2045: Trends, Technologies. Forecasts’, found that around 60% of all flights in the US (domestic and international) are less than 1500 km.

The range of a hydrogen plane can be improved further by switching to a fuel-cell electric propulsion system rather than a hydrogen-combustion turbofan. Doing this would extend the range of the hydrogen plane by approximately 50%, taking the 1500 km range up to 2000+ km for a narrow body. For a long-range wide-body like the Airbus A350, or Boeing 777, it could be possible to fly over 4000km on hydrogen power.

Although highly promising, there is still a long way to go for hydrogen commercial flights to take off. There will still be years of testing, development, and certification before the first passenger-carrying flights come online. There will also need to be infrastructure investment made at airports to handle liquid hydrogen. As such, it will take some key airports investing in the hydrogen infrastructure to kick-start the hydrogen-air travel market.

In 2023, airplanes from Los Angeles (LAX) to Las Vegas (LAS) transported nearly 3.5 million passengers, making it one of the busiest routes in the US. Additionally, it is only 380 km, making it easy to complete with hydrogen power, and possibly with battery electric. Furthermore, these airports are some of the key hubs in the US, along with Atlanta, Denver, Dallas Fort Worth, and Chicago O’Hare. Adding just a few more of the most popular airports in the US to this list and creating a network of 21 airports would cover nearly 25% of the US domestic air travel demand in 2023.

New York (JFK) to London (LHR) is one of the busiest routes in the world, with approximately 3.8 million passengers flying this route in 2023. At 5500 km, it is perhaps outside the realms of possibility for hydrogen power. However, LHR would be one of the starting points for creating a hydrogen-powered network in Europe, along with other important hubs like Schiphol, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, Germany.

Hydrogen-powered flight will not be easy. There are still many technical challenges around certification, hydrogen fuel cells, longevity, making motors powerful enough for airplanes, hydrogen storage, and more. However, with the right airports investing in LH2, refuelling technologies will be a key step in getting the upcoming industry off the ground.

Read the article online at: https://www.globalhydrogenreview.com/hydrogen/18092024/idtechex-why-lax-las-and-lhr-airports-should-invest-in-liquid-hydrogen/