EasyJet May Trial Hydrogen Fuel Cells For Taxiing (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Low-cost airline easyJet is discussing plans to install hydrogen batteries as part of a proposed zero emission fuel system, which would power its aircraft during taxiing. The budget service revealed designs for a hybrid plane this week, and said that it would begin trialling the technology later this year. The system will involve embedding a hydrogen fuel cell on board the aeroplanes, with the energy captured from the brakes on landing able to power the jet on the ground. As the only waste product from a hydrogen cell would be fresh, clean water, Ian Davies, head of engineering at easyJet, also suggested that this could be used to refill the planes' water systems during the flight, providing a water source for passengers to drink and for flushing toilets.

Comments

All for free!!!!

[OzPeter]

The system will involve embedding a hydrogen fuel cell on board the aeroplanes, with the energy captured from the brakes on landing able to power the jet on the ground. This technique is similar to the high-end kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS) used in Formula One cars, which store recovered energy to later use for acceleration.

TFA mentions harvesting the braking energy as being similar to KERS used in Formula 1. But no mention is made of the additional mass or equipment (unsprung at that) that would be needed to be added to the landing gear in order to harvest that energy. Such equipment needing to be robust and large enough to capture a worthwhile amount of energy in the 10 seconds of braking that a plane experiences when landing. For the rest of the 99.9999% of the flight this is dead weight that the plane has to burn fuel in order to carry it around.

So color me surprised if anyone really thinks that is practical. (let alone the bizarre notion that the recovered energy could somehow be funneled into a hydrogen based fuel cell - super cap yes! fuel cell ? are you kidding me?)

It would probably make more sense to assign a tractor to drag each aircraft from the gate to the start of the runway rather than use the planes fuel to taxi around.