ZeroAvia, Absolut Hydrogen Collaborate to Develop Liquid Hydrogen Refuelling Infrastructure for Aircraft

ZeroAvia has part­nered with Abso­lut Hydro­gen to devel­op liq­uid hydro­gen, pro­duc­tion, stor­age and refu­elling at air­ports for pow­er­ing up to 80-seat air­craft by 2027, reports a press release.

The release states, “The part­ners will work togeth­er to build and demon­strate liq­ue­fac­tion and liq­uid hydro­gen stor­age in an air­port con­text and ulti­mate­ly explore the tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ments, con­cept of oper­a­tions, safe­ty pro­ce­dures and stan­dards for larg­er-scale deploy­ment to deliv­er liq­uid hydro­gen to air­craft.”

Greno­ble-based Absolute Hydro­gen a sub­sidiary of Groupe Abso­lut, is a glob­al leader in devel­op­ing such sys­tems for aero­nau­ti­cal, mar­itime and land appli­ca­tions, build­ing upon the Group’s exper­tise and indus­try knowl­edge in com­plex cryo­genic sys­tems. Abso­lut Hydro­gen is offer­ing a full LH2 prod­uct range with an entry small scale hydro­gen liq­ue­fac­tion sys­tem (< 50 kg/day), a 100 kg/day Tur­bo-Bray­ton based H2 liq­ue­fi­er and a 1T/day liq­ue­fi­er based on the same tech­nol­o­gy.

Arnab Chater­jee

The release con­tin­ues, “Whilst ZeroAvia’s first cer­ti­fied pow­er­trains for up to 19 seat air­craft will be pow­ered by gaseous hydro­gen, ZA2000 — a 2–5.4 MW mod­u­lar pow­er­train for 40–80 seat air­craft, tar­get­ing entry-in-ser­vice in 2027 — will require liq­uid hydro­gen. This will improve the vol­u­met­ric ener­gy den­si­ty of the fuel, enabling sup­port for larg­er air­craft, fly­ing more pas­sen­gers, on longer typ­i­cal routes.“

The move fur­ther cements ZeroAvia’s advan­tage at devel­op­ing solu­tions for large region­al tur­bo­props and beyond, fol­low­ing the recent announce­ment of its high tem­per­a­ture fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy promis­ing the nec­es­sary pow­er for larg­er air­craft. 

Arnab Chater­jee, VP, Infra­struc­ture, ZeroAvia, com­ment­ed, “As well as build­ing our in-house liq­uid hydro­gen knowl­edge over the last few months, it has been crit­i­cal to estab­lish part­ner­ships to begin build­ing the ecosys­tem that can deliv­er liq­uid hydro­gen fuel for larg­er air­craft, at larg­er air­port loca­tions.”

He con­tin­ued, “Retain­ing and grow­ing avi­a­tion will bring us all clos­er togeth­er and keep the world small, but it depends upon this quest for zero-emis­sion avi­a­tion being suc­cess­ful.”

Jérôme Lacapère

Jérôme Lacapère, CEO of Abso­lut Hydro­gen, added, “This part­ner­ship with ZeroAvia is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take a new step towards a more sus­tain­able avi­a­tion. Liq­uid hydro­gen is con­sid­ered the most advan­ta­geous state for tomor­row’s avi­a­tion and heavy-duty mobil­i­ty in gen­er­al, and Abso­lut Hydro­gen enables its avail­abil­i­ty thanks to its H2 liq­ue­fiers. I am con­vinced this part­ner­ship will lead to new stan­dards on liq­uid hydro­gen infra­struc­ture for air­crafts. ”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.zeroavia.com/

https://absolut-hydrogen.com/