A part of a Rolls Royce aircraft engine, on display at the Farnborough Airshow, UK, July 19, 2022 (AFP/Archives/JUSTIN TALLIS)
The British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce announced on Monday that it had successfully tested, in partnership with Easyjet, the supply of a propeller aircraft engine with hydrogen instead of kerosene, a technology still very experimental.
It is the “world’s first test of a modern aircraft engine with hydrogen”, and it “marks a major step to prove that hydrogen could be the zero-carbon aviation fuel of the future” , Rolls-Royce said in a statement.
The test carried out on a test bench for several weeks during the month of November is “a decisive demonstration in the decarbonization strategies” of Rolls-Royce as of Easyjet, adds the press release.
The test took place at a British military test center in Salisbury (west London), on an engine normally used for small regional service aircraft. Transformed into an advanced demonstrator, it was powered by hydrogen in gaseous and “green” form – created from wind and tidal energy.
The two partners intend to “prove that hydrogen can provide energy safely and efficiently to civil aircraft engines and are already planning a second series of tests”, with the key to testing a Pearl 15, a Rolls Royce engine.
The engine manufacturer and the airline have “the longer-term ambition to carry out flight tests”, adds the press release. But to achieve this, companies will have to overcome technical challenges, particularly in terms of storage: liquid hydrogen, the least bulky form, must be maintained at -253°C.
And even under these conditions, it is still four times more voluminous than kerosene, at an equivalent amount of energy.
Another problem: hydrogen is difficult to obtain. The most abundant element on earth is not available in its pure state but is trapped in water and hydrocarbons such as natural gas.
Green hydrogen is produced by electrolysis, i.e. the separation of oxygen and hydrogen from water using an electric current, itself obtained using renewable energies.
Other manufacturing methods exist, much more common, but they emit greenhouse gases, such as “grey” hydrogen, from natural gas, or even “blue” with the same technique combined with a capture of part of the CO2.
© 2022 AFP
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