Solvay partners with Novotech on its urban air mobility programmes, which includes future eVTOL aircraft

Solvay will sup­ply com­pos­ites, adhe­sives and tech­ni­cal sup­port to Novotech’s urban air mobil­i­ty pro­grammes, which includes its Seag­ull water land­ing air­craft and future eVTOL air­craft projects.

As part of the new part­ner­ship between both com­pa­nies, Solvay will pro­vide access to its range of ther­moset, ther­mo­plas­tic com­pos­ites and adhe­sive mate­ri­als to devel­op the struc­ture of the Seag­ul­l’s sec­ond pro­to­type, which is due to fly lat­er this year.

Ger­ald Per­rin, Pro­gramme Direc­tor for Solvay’s Com­pos­ite Mate­ri­als Unit, said: “Solvay is proud to sup­port Novotech with our qual­i­fied aero­space tech­nolo­gies as they make inroads in the urban air mobil­i­ty field, devel­op­ing nov­el air­craft that will con­tribute to a sus­tain­able future for mobil­i­ty.”

Novotech has select­ed Solvay’s aero­space-qual­i­fied and NCAMP-reg­is­tered MTM 45–1 and CYOM 5320–1 resin sys­tems. These two prod­ucts have an aero­space pedi­gree sys­tem, with a large pub­licly avail­able dataset, process flex­i­bil­i­ty and prod­uct forms required to enable rapid adop­tion and time to mar­ket.

The Seag­ull is a hybrid air­craft, with an auto­mat­ic fold­ing wing sys­tem, capa­ble of both land­ing and tak­ing off from lakes and sea thanks for a tri­maran hull con­fig­u­ra­tion, enabling a low cost air-mar­itime mobil­i­ty sys­tem.

Novetech is already work­ing on its next pro­gramme, which is an eVTOL air­craft and Solvay will be a key part­ner in the selec­tion of enabling com­pos­ite and adhe­sive mate­ri­als. It will be able to car­ry four pas­sen­gers, have a cruise speed of between 150 to 180km/hr and a range of 200–400km.

“Leonar­do Lec­ce, CEO of Novotech, added: “The Seag­ull is the first two-seater air­craft fea­tur­ing car­bon fibre com­pos­ite com­po­nents man­u­fac­tured via Auto­mat­ed Fiber Place­ment (AFP) rather than via man­u­al process­es. The intro­duc­tion of such advanced auto­mat­ed pro­duc­tion process­es rep­re­sents a first step towards the devel­op­ment of scal­able prod­ucts for a viable UAM envi­ron­ment.”

Solvay has already teamed up with anoth­er com­pa­ny in the eVTOL air­craft mar­ket, after sign­ing an agree­ment with Ver­ti­cal Aero­space to devel­op the com­pos­ite struc­ture for its VA-X4. The first pro­to­type will under­go its first flight tests lat­er this year.