If there is little doubt that hydrogen will be one of the fuels, along with electricity, to decarbonize aviation, its use brings some constraints – including that of very significantly extending the duration of air travel.
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Carbon-free aircraft, in the commercial aviation sector, should be a reality by 2035. This is at least the bet of many industrialists and of which we are fairly convinced that they should achieve it.
To decarbonize the plane of tomorrow, several solutions are envisaged, including hydrogen, which appears as the best candidate and is in fact the solution favored by aircraft manufacturers. But, if this zero fuel episode will be very beneficial for the climateit will also change our habits of trips by increasing quite significantly the duration of the air travel, especially for large aircraft. And not just a little. For example, the Paris-Sydney trip, which currently represents 22 hours of flight, will require 38 and a Paris-New York will require 15 hours of flight, compared to 8 at present!
The size of the tanks necessarily limited
To understand why the use of this fuel, which allows launchers to fly at several kilometers per second, will extend travel times by several hours compared to today’s journeys, it is necessary to know that hydrogen is four times bulkier than the kerosene. This fuel will therefore require huge tanks, which will lead to a change in the architecture of the planes due to these storage issues.
And if the flying wing constitutes the most interesting architecture for a hydrogen plane, because of its storage capacities, it also has its limits in size. Despite its ability to carry very large tanks, the wingspan of the flying wings will necessarily be constrained to a maximum size of 80 to 100 meters. This is why these flying wings will fly less quickly so as to reduce the energy consumption – which will limit the quantities of hydrogen to be taken on board.
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