New Small Rolls-Royce Engine to Advance Hybrid-Electric Flight

Rolls-Royce (RR) has announced at the Paris Air­show, the con­struc­tion of a new small gas tur­bine, specif­i­cal­ly devel­oped to pow­er hybrid-elec­tric flight. The com­pa­ny is set to begin test­ing, reports a press release.

The engine is part of a tur­bo­gen­er­a­tor sys­tem being devel­oped for the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) mar­ket. It includes eVTOLs for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) and com­muter air­craft appli­ca­tions up to 19 seats.

The release explains, “The tur­bo­gen­er­a­tor sys­tem will com­ple­ment the Rolls-Royce Elec­tri­cal propul­sion port­fo­lio by deliv­er­ing an on-board pow­er source with scal­able pow­er offer­ings between 500kW and 1200kW enabling extend­ed range on sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuels (SAF) and lat­er, as it becomes avail­able, through hydro­gen com­bus­tion. This will open up new, longer routes than elec­tric bat­tery pow­ered air­craft can sup­port as of today.”

Olaf Otto, Pres­i­dent of RR Elec­tri­cal, com­ment­ed, “Rolls-Royce will be the lead­ing provider of all-elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric pow­er and propul­sion sys­tems for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty. The Pass-To-Test (PTT) of our brand-new small engine that will pow­er our tur­bo­gen­er­a­tor sys­tem is an impor­tant step for­ward.”

He con­tin­ued, “This prod­uct will enable our cus­tomers to extend the routes that elec­tric flight can sup­port and means more pas­sen­gers will be able to trav­el fur­ther on low to net zero emis­sions air­craft.”

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The release con­tin­ues, “The new com­bus­tion engine uses recent tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ments to achieve a step change in effi­cien­cy of small gas tur­bines. The tur­bo­gen­er­a­tor can be used in ser­i­al or par­al­lel hybrid appli­ca­tions. It is well suit­ed to recharge bat­ter­ies as well as pro­vide ener­gy to elec­tri­cal propul­sion units direct­ly and there­fore enables air­craft to switch between pow­er sources in flight. The research and devel­op­ment of this tech­nol­o­gy is being par­tial­ly fund­ed by the Ger­man Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Affairs and Cli­mate Action.” And adds, “This engine will be test­ed on SAF in the com­ing months and will be used for the com­mis­sion­ing of Rolls-Royce’s test facil­i­ty in Dahle­witz.”

The RR Pow­er Gear­box test facil­i­ty has been mod­i­fied to accom­mo­date test­ing of the new engine, and to con­firm “the engine’s tech­ni­cal attrib­ut­es.”

Mean­while, Rolls-Royce is devel­op­ing “com­plete pow­er and propul­sion sys­tems for all-elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric appli­ca­tions.” The sys­tems under design fea­ture the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy, from pow­er gen­er­a­tion and ener­gy stor­age via pow­er elec­tron­ics and con­trol sys­tems to elec­tric motors.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.rolls-royce.com

(Images: Rolls-Royce)