Honeywell, NREL Collaborate to Scale Hydrogen Fuel Storage Solutions for UAVs
Honeywell announced this week, it is collaborating with the U.S Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), on a year-long collaboration to prototype and support the commercialisation of a cartridge-based hydrogen fuel storage solution for Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), reports a press release.
The release explains, “Honeywell is to provide technological expertise, testing for fuel cartridge technology, supply chain support, prototyping and fuel cell evaluation to qualify for the ‘Fuel Additives for Solid Hydrogen (FLASH) Carriers in Electric Aviation’ project.”
This FLASH project will mature a new hydrogen carrier technology developed at NREL as part of the HyMARC (Hydrogen Materials Advanced Research Consortium) program. The project is funded by a partnership of the DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, NREL, alongside Honeywell.
The release continues, “Electric UAVs are seeing rapid adoption in industrial applications such as surveying, infrastructure inspection and security. Many of these applications previously required inefficient ground-based vehicles or hazardous use of piloted helicopters.”
And goes on, “For short-range applications, UAVs have the potential to offer greater efficiency, reliability and precision compared with conventional combustion-driven aircraft. For long-range and heavy-payload applications, however, battery-powered electric UAVs today fall short. The NREL and Honeywell collaboration seeks to prove that hydrogen can help address these longer-duration, high-payload challenges.”
Katherine Hurst
Katherine Hurst, NREL Senior Scientist and Group Manager, commented, “Today’s long-range drones are typically powered by internal combustion engines. While they provide the required range that battery-powered electric UAVs lack, these engines have issues with excessive noise, vibration and emissions, including carbon emissions.”
She continued, “This is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate the performance of hydrogen storage materials that we developed in our laboratory together with Honeywell to fuel a real-life flying vehicle.”
Steve Christensen, one of NREL Leads on the program proposal, added, “This is a dream project for a national lab researcher. Honeywell has already built and tested devices that can use our materials, giving us the chance to drop our technology directly into their systems and move this promising drone fuel toward commercialisation through collaborative research and development.”
The FLASH program aims to deliver an alternative approach in which “efficient and long-lasting hydrogen storage is coupled to a fuel cell that converts hydrogen to electricity to power electric UAV flight.” This resulting system enables long-range flights, but without the noise and tail-pipe emissions of combustion engines. It will also help sensitive drone applications like atmospheric monitoring, where “exhaust gases and rumbling engines would reduce performance.”
The project is focused on a solid material that can rapidly release hydrogen gas for use by the fuel cell. The material has a high hydrogen capacity and can operate at low temperatures (approximately 100°C). This class of materials is highly versatile to industrial hydrogen delivery requirements.
Dave Shilliday
Dave Shilliday, VP and General Manager of Urban Air Mobility and Uncrewed Aerial Systems at Honeywell Aerospace, remarked, “The collaboration with NREL is the latest example of how Honeywell is driving the future of sustainable aviation. Hydrogen can offer significant advantages for eVTOL systems in terms of endurance and range, while significantly expanding the possibilities of UAVs beyond the limitations posed by battery-electric powertrains.”
For more information
https://www.honeywell.com/us/en
(Top image: Honeywell)
