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Boeing Hydrogen Powered Drone First Flight
garymortimer writes with news of the test flight of a hydrogen powered UAV. From the article: "Phantom Eye's innovative and environmentally responsible liquid-hydrogen propulsion system will allow the aircraft to stay on station for up to four days while providing persistent monitoring over large areas at a ceiling of up to 65,000 feet, creating only water as a byproduct. The demonstrator, with its 150-foot wingspan, is capable of carrying a 450-pound payload."
Those 450 pounds won't be flowers and kittens, right?
Isn't this kind of like strapping a bomb to a bomb? All that hydrogen could make one hell of a detonator if the folks involved aren't careful.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Water as a by-product!? We can make it rain I tells ya! We just need enough of these. So we'll have to charge 50 times GDP. But that's okay the desperate farmers will pay. To offset the costs we can write a play and musical about it!
Environmentally-responsible airplane that can also carry a wicked-heavy bomb....*sigh*
Are they going to use them for watering the crops or something?
The irony is... is.... unspeakable.
It only creates water as a byproduct! It's so clean! So innovative! So environmentally responsible! Luckily, liquid hydrogen can be found anywhere! No need to burn any of those nasty fossil fuels or evil nookyaler things, no sir! This is the real deal! Clean, clean, clean! Next stop, The Hydrogen Economy!
What does it take to get that liquid hydrogen in the first place. I bet this is as environmentally friendly as the process to make all the batteries in hybrid vehicles.
Is the facility where these violations of our privacy are orchestrated going to be solar powered?
Good thing it only produces water (con trails) at altitude - those don't have any effect. At high altitude it would be better to burn coal so the result is just CO2 which doesn't seed clouds and reflect sunlight. Anyone got a coal powered aircraft?
Do you have something you could cite or are you blowing an old talking point out your ass?
When will the technology of this UAV trickle down to automakers?
I'd love to drive a bomb.
Along with water, isn't there quite a bit of heat produced as part of the fuel cell process? It would seem to me that this may take away some of the stealth benefits, no?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I'd mod up if I had points, but I don't. Mod 'em up!
Look up ortho and para hydrogen. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_isomers_of_hydrogen "If orthohydrogen is not removed from liquid hydrogen, the heat released during its decay can boil off as much as 50% of the original liquid[5]." This is a demonstration of quantum mechanical effects on a macro scale.
Mainstream media has one unwritten rule: if you can correctly pronounce "nuclear", you will not be allowed on the air.
I can't be the only one to notice.
ROFLMAO! you silly Slashtards! a 'green' drone?
"producing only water as exhaust"
of course that hydrogen had to come from somewhere. and it wasnt kitten farts. same with 'electric cars' - it has to come from somewhere.
they are taking the CS approach. stick another 'intermediary layer', until there are so many layers nobody can tell what came from where, when or how it got there or why.
"so it burns hydrogen that got created as a byprocess of petrochemical activity, probably hydraulic fracturing of methane which is controversial because it causes water table pollution that is almost un-recoverable"
--"yes, but the only exhaust is water! its green!"
"and it carries guided missiles that an increasingly smaller group of civilians inside the whitehouse use to target a secret list of secret enemies, and kill them without trial or accountability of any kid"
--"yes, and its very aerodynamic! also it uses the latest composite materials!"
Saw the video of it taking off.. was on a cart until lift off leaving the only obvious wheels behind. So how does it land? didn't see anything on the page about that.
Along with water, isn't there quite a bit of heat produced as part of the fuel cell process? It would seem to me that this may take away some of the stealth benefits, no?
From the Wikipedia article:
> Each of the two propulsion systems consist of modified Ford 2.3 liter engines, reduction gearbox, and 4-blade propeller. The engines were originally designed for use with the some models of the petrol-burning Ford Fusion car. To be able to run in the oxygen starved atmosphere at 65,000 ft, the engines feature a multiple turbocharger system that compresses that available low density air and reduces the radiated infrared heat signature to increase its stealth properties.
> The engines, which provide 150 horsepower at sea level, have been tuned so as to be able to run on hydrogen. The Boeing marketing department states that this will make the aircraft economical and “green” to run, as the only by-product will be water.
I'm calling bs on the water-only claim. Combustion at high temperature and pressure (in an engine) also produces NOx (Nitrogen Oxides) from the nitrogen in the air, see, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx
but hey, its politically correct now because its "enviromentalist".
California uber alles indeed. oh, its related. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW8UlY8eXCk&feature=related
A marvelous achievement, spectacular success. :D
Why this and not some sort of lighter then air craft for long duration non-bomb-dropping missions?
When do I get my flying car?
All these shenanigans about Hydrogen being a perfectly clean fuel ignores the fact of where it comes from.
We don't get hydrogen from splitting water. That costs too much. We get it from natural gas, which has 1 carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms. This is done by steam reforming, and while it's possible to sequester the resulting CO2 by injecting it underground, it's not done by anyone. Because, again, it costs money.
We can also get it from coal, after conversion to "town gas" and that's not the cleanest of processes either.
Yes, I'm jaded. I used to be a true believer in this stuff, then I read more and grew up.
--
BMO
While hydrogen sucks for density per volume at 5.6 MJ/liter versus gasoline at 34 MJ/liter, it's actually has good energy density by weight with 123 MJ/kg versus gasoline at 47 MJ/kg. The huge bulbous body of this thing is simply to store all the fuel. I suspect their main reason for going hydrogen was that it's easier to burn at high altitude and has a wide useable fuel/air ratio.
This low energy density per volume, is also the reason why it can't really be used for trucking. You'd take up half of the usable cargo room just to get the equivalent amount of energy as a normal diesel fill.
People have a problem with how hydrogen is produced now, while ignoring that as technology progresses it will solve storage and generation issues like the one mentioned. For some reason they cannot imagine that processes and materials will continue to be improved.
The simple truth is that hydrogen is readily abundant, and that fueling will always be faster than transferring the equivalent amount of energy via electrical transfer.
Hydrogen will win the end, we just don't know how yet... but its victory over other alternative fuels is there to see for those who think about the future.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am surprised that no poster so far mentioned the Boeing Condor. Same layout, same propulsion concept, same mission, only a different fuel this time. I guess some guys at Boeing never stopped working on this plane.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
When do I get my flying car?
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I, for one, am rather disappointed to see autonomous spy capabilities within spitting distance of 99.999 percent uptime when the average consumer smartphone becomes a glossy brick within 5 hours of being disconnected from the power grid.
Everyone wants to pretend that the burning of hydrogen is as clean as can be... but it is that ONLY if the burning is done with the right mix ratio, and doesn't also produce other possible products, like hydroxide ions in the water, hydrogen peroxide, etc...
But mainly, there isn't hydrogen gas just hanging around, you have to generate it, which takes power, and compress it, which takes power, and the storage tanks, if pressurized, will make the whole system less efficient because they have to be able to withstand great pressure differentials, and thus will probably be fairly heavy, and that weight doesn't change much even as the tank empties. Remember that if they expect to operate at 65,000 feet, the outside atmospheric pressure is much lower at that altitude, which means an even higher differential of pressure than what you find on the ground.
If the source of the power used to extract hydrogen (from say... water) and the power used to compress it is not clean, then NEITHER IS THE PLANE, even if the only product it makes is water... all you've done is moved the pollution-belching tailpipe somewhere else, just as with rechargeable electric cars.
Also, I have to wonder, why not supplement that hang time with solar cells, or does it do that already? I didn't see where in the article it mentioned if they have solar cells... or how about a balloon to hold it up once it gets in position, then it could hang for weeks, or even months.
I was really surprised to see that this Phantom Eye has a cable-braced wing, that it's not a cantilever wing like every other large-span plane built in the last 80 years. Granted, it makes a lot of sense structurally -- long span cantilever wings have to be built very strong at the root, as the bending stresses are enormous -- but still, it's a surprise to see.
Boeing's Sugar Volt is a proposed hybrid electric/diesel commuter plane with a strut-braced wing -- so Boeing is apparently thinking outside the box on a number of concepts.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Back when I was young, and dirt was new, a "clean-burning" engine was "clean" when it produced only water vapor and carbon dioxide (and didn't produce, say, carbon monoxide or carbon particulates, et al.). The reason given for this assertion was that both water vapor and carbon dioxide were "natural" constituents of the atmosphere -- i.e., they were already there, in measurable amounts -- so no harm could be done by their production. People then just could not understand how water vapor and carbon dioxide could cause any harm: After all, animals -- including people -- had been exhaling them both for millennia.
Now, however, it has become clear that one can cause a problem not just by putting a *new* component into the atmosphere (e.g., CFCs), but by putting an existing component into the atmosphere (e.g., CO2) in such large quantities that the natural balance is disturbed.
I think we should keep in mind that anything done can be overdone. Water vapor is a natural part of the atmosphere, too, but if hydrogen-powered aircraft become popular we could see the CO2 problem redux, with water vapor.
The production of hydrogen involves reacting water with methane at high temperatures producing hydrogen and carbon dioxide. At the end of the day burning hydrogen is no cleaner than burning methane; the carbon dioxide and water are just released in different places.
I bet a big part of the reason for H fuel is to limit the trakablility of the crafts exhaust with telescopes via the vapor spectrum.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
Not sure if you're trolling or not, but the atmosphere is currently more or less saturated with H2O. In fact, it frequently condenses and precipitates out of the atmosphere to fall on land in great quantities.
Creation of new clouds at altitude has been shown to play a bit of havoc with earth's albedo, IIRC, but it really isn't possible to put more water vapor into the atmosphere than is already there.
..but when there's too much water vapor in the sky it falls down as rain?
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Wow - that is a "faith based" point of view if ever I've seen one.
It's not faith. It's simple science, understanding that hydrogen is (A) vastly abundant, and (B) extremely clean to use. That along with electric motors making way more sense than conventional combustion engines, and battery technology getting harder and harder to ramp up to store a decent range makes the domination of hydrogen inevitable after we have a brief flirtation with battery driven electric cars.
It's just looking at all the facts and thinking about what it will mean ten years hence.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No Hindenburg jokes at all yet?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Um, no, the atmosphere is nowhere near saturated with H2O; even in the tropics the relative humidity only approaches 100% near the surface, in the lower troposphere. At altitude there is plenty of opportunity to add H2O; think of the number of aircraft contrails you've seen in your life.
My point is that the same type of argument you make about water vapor was made in 1965 about CO2 -- there is a natural atmospheric regulatory mechanism (in the case of CO2, it was plant photosynthesis), so there's nothing to worry about -- and that that type of argument is specious: Adding all that water to the ecosystem, in a place that has never seen that quantity before, is going to have consequences. One aircraft flight per day? Sure, unmeasurable on a global scale. 100,000 aircraft flights per day? Well. . . .
because we all know that Hydrogen and Aviation is a successful match.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Not to take anything away from the what appears to be an exciting design. But, I hope I am not the only person to take issue with the words "environmentally responsible" and "only water as a byproduct" when in reference to the atmosphere. Atmospheric water vapor is one of the the greatest contributors to the greenhouse effect.
So that's what we're going to do with all the obsolete 35mm and 110 mm cameras? Drop them on someone?