Good morning EUROAVIAns,
in today’s Fact Friday we talk innovative aircraft solutions.
The aerospace giant Airbus has revealed three concepts of zero-carbon emission commercial aircrafts that are planned to be put into service by 2035. Their main purpose is to reduce environmental pollution, since airplanes are one of the biggest polluters on the globe.
These concepts are named “ZEROe” and include a turbofan, a turboprop and a “blended-wing-body” design.
The aircrafts will be able to carry up to 100 passengers, with a range of 1000 nautical miles and 200 passengers for the turboprop design, and a range of 2000 nautical miles for the other two.
All of the designs will be equipped with a pair of modified gas-turbine engines to provide thrust that rely on hydrogen as a primary power source instead of jet fuel. In fact, Hydrogen makes up 75% of the universe and which does not emit any carbon dioxide.
Since hydrogen has a different volumetric energy compared to jet fuel, Airbus’ engineers were forced to study new storage options and aircraft architectures, leading to unique designs. The liquid hydrogen tanks will therefore be located underneath the wings in the blended-body-wing configuration and behind the rear pressure bulkhead in the other two.
Being just concepts, there is still no guarantee that these aircrafts will be adopted. However, the company’s ambition of partaking in the decarbonisation of the aviation industry is undoubtedly admirable.