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Hydrogen-Powered Drone Can Fly For 4 Hours at a Time
stowie writes: The Hycopter uses its frame to store energy in the form of hydrogen instead of air. With less lift power required, its fuel cell turns the hydrogen in its frame into electricity to power its rotors. The drone can fly for four hours at a time and 2.5 hours when carrying a 2.2-pound payload. “By removing the design silos that typically separate the energy storage component from UAV frame development - we opened up a whole new category in the drone market, in-between battery and combustion engine systems,” says CEO Taras Wankewycz.
just 4oz or so across two fairly large tubes...
It's bullshit, just do the math:
Even if pressurized at 5100 PSI, Hydrogen's density is only 25 grams/liter. 4 ounces is ~113 grams. That means you'd need ~4.5 liters.
Even if you assume that they built some super-material of incredibly strong plastic, do you really think each of those tubes contains more volume than a 2-liter soda bottle?
It's way too heavy. An RTG needs a lot of metal to work, encapsulation of the plutonium, radiators, and it needs size - there has to be a temperature differential for it to work, and for that you need a certain amount of distance to dissipate the heat across.
And it's way too inefficient. The RTG used on the Voyager Probes produced about 2400 Watts of thermal power, which was enough for 157W of electricity. The total weight of the device was 37.7 kg. This Parrot drone consumes 14.5 W when hovering, so even if RTGs scaled in a linear manner (which is optimistic), a large enough unit would be larger than the payload capacity.
The hydrogen tank in the structural members carries 120g of fuel. You could extend the longevity of the thing enormously by fitting a secondary fuel tank as part of that 1kg payload you're allowed.