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World’s first crewed liquid hydrogen plane takes off

https://thenextweb.com/news/world-first-piloted-liquid-hydrogen-plane-takes-off

At a somewhat small and unassuming airport in Maribor, Slovenia, German hydrogen propulsion startup H2FLY has quietly been building up to a major milestone in zero-emission aviation over the summer. And all the hard work has come to fruitio

World’s first crewed liquid hydrogen plane takes off::undefined

49 comments

MonkCanatella

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While technically zero emission, 95% of hydrogen is created using natural gas reformation. It's really really disingenuous to say zero emission when it uses a huge amount of fossil fuels in the creation of the fuel

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-fuel-basics#:~:text=Today%2C%20hydrogen%20fuel%20can%20be,solar%2Ddriven%20and%20biological%20processes.

Revanee

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The point is that, unlike kerosene, hydrogen can be made using clean energy

MonkCanatella

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The point is that, until electrolysis is cheaper than using natural gas, it will continue to be made with natural gas.

iturnedintoanewt

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Yes, but now the onus is moved away from finding a non polluting engine, which needs to be on the moving vehicle, to a non polluting fuel, which can be produced anywhere. And can technically and with proper regulation be produced with no pollution. Which is a lot more than the current state of affairs.

MonkCanatella

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That's really lucky for fossil fuel companies who will be making bank on hydrogen, and stalling any research or innovation in green hydrogen. You act like there are no major players making tons of money from hydrogen already, who don't want electrolysis to gain any ground against the status quo which is making them filthy rich

iturnedintoanewt

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Again, this can be achieved through regulation. Regulating the source of hydrogen manufacturing process, for once. If a government wants, it can do it and enforce it.

MonkCanatella

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Have you heard of regulatory capture? What makes you think we'll regulate hydrogen, when we're not regulating fossil fuels, which is why we're in this mess in the first place? The first thing these companies are going to do is say that we need to be deregulated to fight climate change.

xodoh74984

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You are a person arguing to do nothing to attempt to solve the problem of CO2 emissions from airplanes, which account for a very large proportion of global emissions. You are arguing incessantly about why progress shouldn't be made. Cut it out. The energy density of liquid hydrogen makes it the only viable fuel source for air travel that isn't a petrochemical. That's why this is important. Fuck your whining about boogymen in the fossil fuel industry as a backdrop to this. It's irrelevant. What matters is progress, because zero carbon air travel is probably the most difficult challenge we face in cutting fossil fuels out of modern society.

pedroapero

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So what, we keep burning coal because it is cheaper ?

MonkCanatella

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nice false equivalency. And I'm not prescribing anything, I'm describing what is currently happening, and that it will continue to happen until electrolysis is more profitable than natural gas.

KSPAtlas

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It can be, but it takes a huge amount of power to do it, and the biggest hydrogen production method (reforming) produces GHGs itself

where_am_i

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So what? Build solar plants in Africa, pump out hydrogen, keep flying as often as you want emissions free. It is a solution and as such a hydrogen plane is a massive advancement towards a sustainable future for the aviation. Whether it will turn oit this way is a different question.

Pottsunami

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Make it with nuclear power. Turn water to hydrogen and oxygen. Release the oxygen. Package the hydrogen. Burn the hydrogen and it mixes with the oxygen. Maybe eject the spent radioactive fuel into space some day?

SamboT

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ok brb

jayandp

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Disposing of radioactive material via space is not a great idea. Not to mention the cost inefficiencies, the risk of something going wrong with the rocket and spreading nuclear material all over the place is non-zero.

anlumo

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Nothing has zero risk attached. We’re pumping radioactive material into the atmosphere all the time in coal power plants, and nobody bats an eye. This isn’t even a failure condition, this is just normal.

PrincessLeiasCat

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Was this one though? It says they’re using Air Liquide, and here’s a quote FTA:

Something else a future of clean-burning, hydrogen-powered aviation requires is — other than the actual fuel — is refuelling infrastructure. For Project HEAVEN, H2FLY has been working with Air Liquide.

For the French industrial gas supplier, which is betting heavily on green hydrogen as part of the future energy mix, it is also about demonstrating viability and shoring up industry demand. “This is the very first time we have brought liquid hydrogen to be refuelled at a commercial airport,” said Pierre Crespi, Innovation Director at Air Liquide Advanced Technologies.

(Emphasis mine) if it’s green hydrogen, doesn’t that mean it was made using clean energy (as opposed to gray hydrogen)?

A_A

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Air Liquide is the supplyer of the hydrogen. You have green and blue hydrogen. One is produced with reformation and carbon capture while the other one is produced with electrolysis. So, if the electricity is from renewable then it's technically zero emission.

PrincessLeiasCat

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Yes I understand that. OP said it wasn’t, and the article didn’t say specifically what was used for this flight, only that Air Liquide wants to use green H2 for this project.

MonkCanatella

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I wouldn't bet on a company telling you that they're using "green hydrogen" to be doing anything other than pulling the wool over your eyes. There's a reason the fossil fuel industry is heavily invested in hydrogen and pro hydrogen propaganda. Once you start noticing it becomes really obvious

PrincessLeiasCat

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In this very specific area, though, it’s like a badge of honor. If it was Shell or Exxon, lol no. And you’re right to be skeptical. But for the Fuel Cell airplane company, they specifically sought out a company who could provide green hydrogen because that is their goal and motivation. There are some companies who do provide this service for the same reasons - they genuinely care about the climate crisis and want to change things. They “nerd out” about being able to do this, for lack of a better expression. If you’re ever in a room with a lot of them, it’s very obvious.

infeeeee

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That's not a new plane, that's the double fuselage version of Pipistrel Taurus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipistrel_Taurus

Pipistrel Taurus is a glider, first flown in 2004. There is an added benefit of using a glider for testing a new engine: gliders have a much better L/D ratio, so less power needed for longer flights, and if there is a malfunction they can land safely while gliding.

eggymachus

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Oh, the humanity!

FlyingSquid

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Should have used helium. Works for balloons!

A_A

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LEL for Hydrogen: 4.0 (% in air)
UEL is 75 %
This is the most severe (wide range) for any fuel.
LEL and UEL Explained (Explosive Gas) - Projectmaterials

This is on top to hydrogen enbrittlement and low temperature enbrittlement of metals.

Good luck with the insurance fees for commercial flights.

agressivelyPassive

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Aviation is the one field, where burning some form of carbohydrate is actually the only viable option. Batteries may be an option for short flights, but I don't see any solution for long haul flights.

Whether the fuel ends up being (synthetic) kerosene or some plant oil stuff doesn't really matter, the turbine isn't going anywhere.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow

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Yeah getting aircraft onto renewable energy is probably the lowest priority, if everything else was renewable it wouldn't even matter if they were never renewable.

A_A

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I agree...
( except for a small typo : it's carbohydride or hydrocarbon )

MonkCanatella

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no no, the planes need a big plate of spaghetti before long haul journeys

A_A

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Lol, nice 😋,
Also it's amazing how birds can effectively do that !

j4yt33

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Graphine

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I like how you just assume that we haven't advanced technology or safety features at all since the 1930s.

j4yt33

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It was a joke

A_A

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The space shuttle contain a huge reservoir of liquid hydrogen at very low temperature creating extremely difficult engineering stresses.
So, insurance cost will be sky high if ever such planes take commercial flights.

photonic_sorcerer

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Well you know what else is explosive? Jet fuel!

A_A

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Do you know how brittle metals become at very low temperature ? Did you notice I did not talk about hydrogen explosiveness ?

But sure, let's now talk about explosiveness. Do you know the mixture ratio range is completely different (much greater) for air + H2 explosive mixture as compared to other mixtures ? You are very far from an expert on the topic aren't you ?

Cleverdawny

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Hydrogen isn't explosive, it's flammable. Just like jet fuel.

A_A

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Detonation
"A very wide variety of fuels may occur as gases (e.g. hydrogen), droplet fogs, or dust suspensions. In addition to dioxygen, oxidants can include halogen compounds, ozone, hydrogen peroxide, and oxides of nitrogen. Gaseous detonations are often associated with a mixture of fuel and oxidant in a composition somewhat below conventional flammability ratios."

For Hydrogen, if I recall correctly, the explosive range is from 4% to 75% hydrogen in air. I may dig a little bit more to find sources.

How many more false experts want to comment on this ? And feel free to downvote, you only underline your ignorance and arrogance.

Cleverdawny

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Yes, when you combine a flammable substance and an oxidant, you can get an explosive. But hydrogen is flammable. It isn't an explosive. Explosives have their own oxidants.

A_A

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I wrote "H2 explosive mixture" in the first comment to which you replied here.

Now tell me something I don't know about.

PrincessLeiasCat

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It also had 5 pressure vessels’ worth of liquid H2 for the fuel cells in the payload bay, sometimes more depending on the flight (and never had any issues wrt that, though of course it did present its own challenges). Challenger’s “failure mode” was in the SRB. The ET happened to be right next to it. We can talk about the ET and its direct impact on Columbia because the foam shedding was a problem with the ET. And of course, the issues with the NASA culture that were present for both.

I’m not going to wade into the semantics of explosive vs flammable argument further down because at the end of the day it’s semantics.

And I am an expert since you seem very intent on only experts partaking in this discussion.

A_A

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I agree the SRB was the start of the huge explosion that somehow involved liquid hydrogen. I was posting that example because I was replying to an example where it was gaseous hydrogen combustion and because for the plane in the post it is liquid hydrogen which is used.

I don't mind talking to non-expert as long as they don't believe they know what they don't know and do not insist they know better when they don't.

From your comment I don't know what "ET" means but I suppose "SRB" is something like ~~side booster rocket~~ solid rocket booster (?) I am not an expert of the space shuttle so please tell me if it pleases you to do so.

PrincessLeiasCat

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ET is the External Tank, the orange part of the Shuttle that held liquid H2 and O2.

The gaseous H2 was still a concern for the H2 tanks in the Payload Bay. If there was a leak that accumulated H2 in the bay after the Payload Bay doors were closed for re-entry, that would be a flammability concern.

They both present their own sets of problems and failure modes that need to be discussed and mitigated, but we do have experience in other areas to look back on and learn from.

A_A

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I want to apologize for posting that explosion image if maybe you were working on the space shuttle or close to people in there.

Many years ago I came to know an industry where accidental hydrogen explosions were to be described as "rapid oxidation events" (ROE) for insurance paperwork. Somehow writing the word "explosion" would have made insurance costs explode !
There are strong (& more) reasons to disbelive commercial transport projects involving hydrogen as energy source (energy vector).

Thanks for your time and explanations.

PrincessLeiasCat

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Your experience is valid, and thank you for your apology. It is not always an easy thing to do, and I know that and appreciate it. :)