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New Hydrogen Engine Test Shows Future of Aviation
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."
What sort of mileage does a Taurus get at 65000 feet?
liqbase
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.
New Hydrogen Engine Test Shows Future of Aviation
Oh, the humanity!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
How about that, I didn't know that Ford's new Taurus could fly that high. The last time I tried to get a Taurus to fly, I could only get about 3 feet off the ground and usually ended up shoving the front suspension through the hood upon landing.
My, how far they've come with car technology these days...
Hate to be the downer of the party, but that's the way our leaders think. Gain the "high ground."
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?
So, the fuel economy would go up with less fuel in the tank? Is this the reason why my wife always seems to drive her Taurus around with the fuel gauge always on "E"?
You people need to stop feeding this sort of stuff to the mechanically inept. I mean, it took me two hours to explain there was no such thing as "blinker fluid" to her friend the other day.
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.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
"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."
:-)
Cool! I didn't know those sorts of add-on options worked for planes too!
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.
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The diareses should be taken away from wünderengine, where they don't belong, would come in handy on "über(yourexpression)" where they would be more correct.
I have to wonder how this works. Hydrogen engines that I have heard of are supposed to carry out the reaction of
2(H2) + (O2) -> 2(H2O)
But this of course requires oxygen to happen. Is there much oxygen available at 65,000 feet? Consider even Mount Everest is in the neighborhood of 29,000 feet, and life (generally) needs supplemental oxygen at that altitude. If there is barely enough for life at less than 30,000, is there actually enough for combustion when you're more than twice as far above sea level?
I also wonder what happens to the exhaust at that altitude. What becomes of water under those conditions? I'm not a pilot of any sort, so I don't know what happens in that part of the atmosphere.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
TCAP-Abort
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 is stagnate in America. We haven't built a new reactor in ages, and the old ones are being bought by those running them 24/7 at full load, just begging for a meltdown.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
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!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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
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.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
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...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Well, yeah. I don't want a car that has a lag between me starting going and getting up to highway speed that's measurable with the minute hand of a stopwatch. It's just not safe merging onto a 65mph highway at 30.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
All use Jet A1... Or near as damn it.
Except motorcycles, and they developed one which would run on it for that reason.
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The 2l Diesel Skoda Octavia beloved by cabbies will do 60mpg and 0-60 in 9.6 seconds. Has room to carry 5 (yeah, I know that's only 2 Americans) and space for luggage in the boot.
The only problem being that all the used ones on the market have done 250,000 miles.
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Ford Deluxe Option package A: Assorted Squeaks and Rattles.
Interestingly, 1995 was the last year Ford offered Deluxe Option package A as a standalone option. Subsequent years included bundled option packages such as:
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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).
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
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 fervently is that it was the first transportation accident covered in mass-media audio/video distribution. Bloody everybody has heard Herbert Morrison's "Oh the humanity". These days, the general population would hardly bat an eye, but at the time, it was unprecedented.
The real tragedy of the Hindenburg disaster is that the world gave up on lighter-than-air craft, perceiving hydrogen-filled balloons as inherently dangerous. In fact, it's very likely it would have been safer than conventional fixed-wing jetliners. You don't fall out of the sky due to engine failure in an airship. Meanwhile, a blimp on approach hold uses drastically less fuel. Sure, they're nowhere near as fast as jets, but they would have made a great complimentary technology.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Ford's in his flivver, all's well with the world.
http://www.qinetiq.com/home/newsroom/news_releases_homepage/2006/3rd_quarter/QinetiQ_s_Zephyr_UAV_achieves_flight_record.html The aircraft uses a combination of solar array and rechargeable batteries and, when fully developed, is expected to operate for months at a time at an altitude above 50,000 feet But i wonder if combining solar with hydrogen would be possible for such projects.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
IMO It's on its way out as cabby love. The new flame around here is an iCTDI FRV. I am seeing more and more of these with Taxi stickers. It does 0 to 60 faster than the Octavia has much better handling and suspension and has a comparable boot to the Octavia estate. Carries 6 Europeans or 2 Americans as passengers (an American will not fit in the front seats). Most importantly - costs less.
Back to the article subject - what goes around comes around. We are back doing propeller planes. I guess the Russians were right with the Tu-95 Bear and the Tu-114. Pity, the 114 never got further development to abate its noise problems. IMO, with modern propeller tech its noise should be possible to drop within EU/USA noise regs. At the same time it is more economical than any comparable jet aircraft.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
This is the real automotive future.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
It's fine trying to sound suave and all, but it kinda breaks the illusion when you mix in "röckdöts". Or maybe, just maybe, that wasn't on purpose?
"Good news, everyone!"
This discussion you're having reminds me very much of the thousands of paper balloon bombs that Japan sent across the ocean (to the US) during WWII. It's not very well known, but it's there if you look for it.
"Good news, everyone!"
Hydrogen is not and never has been a proposed solution for energy generation. It is a proposed solution for energy transport. Imagine the following scenario
- We perfect launching payloads into space with hydrogen engines
- We launch an orbital power power station that uses solar energy (at a much higher efficiency than we can get planet-side) to produce hydrogen from launched water payloads.
- Periodically we launch up a water payload and bring down a hydrogen payload.
There you go. Closed loop cycle for perfectly clean energy thanks to the Sun.
You can also substitute hydrogen launching of the payloads with electromagnetic slingshot launching if you want.
Won't help SouthWest Airlines up&down flights very much, but would be a big help in the long-haul across the [Big] Pond.
>>> most of these options would be considerably more expensive than the present energy sources
Wind is cost-competitive with coal and gas. We're on track to have 10% of total world electricity generation come from wind in about 2020 (based on fitting a logistic adoption curve to either the capacity or capacity-addition data).
2000 lbs is a ton of hellfire missiles
Hehe. Nice one!
The enemies of Democracy are