“ZeroAvia, PowerCell Partner on Next Gen Fuel Cell Development to Explore Higher Temperature Technologies”

ZeroAvia announced this week it has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) with Pow­er­Cell Group to part­ner on next gen­er­a­tion fuel cell tech­nolo­gies, reports a press release. R&D will focus on inter­me­di­ate and high tem­per­a­ture cells which will open up more ener­gy inten­sive avi­a­tion appli­ca­tions includ­ing for large fixed-wing air­craft and rotor­craft.

The release states, “The two com­pa­nies have been work­ing togeth­er for the last few years, with Pow­er­Cell fuel cell stacks form­ing part of the pro­to­type ZeroAvia pow­er­trains. ZeroAvia is design­ing a bespoke mul­ti-stack bal­ance-of-plant archi­tec­ture using PowerCell’s low tem­per­a­ture pro­ton exchange mem­brane (LT-PEM) stacks applic­a­ble to avi­a­tion appli­ca­tions. As such, the Swedish fuel cell man­u­fac­tur­er is a key sup­pli­er for ZeroAvia’s first 600kW pow­er­train (ZA600) designed for up to 20 seat air­craft.”

This high tem­per­a­ture PEM fuel cell HT-PEM (part of the roadmap to deliv­ery of ZA2000 pow­er­train for 40–80 seat air­craft and a key part of the company’s com­po­nent offer­ing to oth­er clean flight inno­va­tors) “is already demon­strat­ing indus­try record pow­er den­si­ty in excess of 2.5 kW/kg at the cell lev­el, with a clear path­way to reach­ing 3+ kW/kg at the sys­tem lev­el in the com­ing months,” con­tin­ues the release.

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Increas­ing the oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture of fuel cell sys­tems can allow for a reduc­tion in cool­ing and humid­i­fi­ca­tion required, sim­pli­fy­ing the archi­tec­ture and improv­ing the amount of pow­er for a giv­en unit of weight.   

The col­lab­o­ra­tion lever­ages PowerCell’s long expe­ri­ence of indus­tri­al­is­ing hydro­gen-elec­tric tech­nolo­gies to push advanced fuel cells solu­tions to high TRL lev­els. For ZeroAvia, this pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to employ its tech­nol­o­gy in dif­fer­ent sec­tors, while retain­ing a core focus on aero­space.

Val Mif­takhov, Founder and CEO of ZeroAvia, com­ment­ed, “Work­ing togeth­er we can deliv­er change in this indus­try faster, as well as using these extreme use cas­es to advance the capa­bil­i­ties of solu­tions for myr­i­ad oth­er trans­port and non-trans­port sec­tors.”

Val Mif­takhov

Richard Berkling, CEO Pow­er­Cell Group, remarked,  “For Pow­er­Cell, this is a key future mar­ket. We’re con­fi­dent that the first hydro­gen-elec­tric air­craft will be fly­ing com­mer­cial­ly in the upcom­ing years.” Adding, “When that hap­pens, it will have a snow­ball effect as the envi­ron­men­tal and oper­at­ing cost ben­e­fits become clear to air­lines and their pas­sen­gers.”

The release says, “ZeroAvia has already exten­sive­ly test­ed a pro­to­type of its first engine (ZA600) aboard a Dornier 228 air­craft at its UK base and sub­mit­ted its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion appli­ca­tion for the ZA600 at the end of last year. 

“The com­pa­ny has also per­formed advanced ground tests in the US and UK for the key build­ing block tech­nolo­gies for the ZA2000 sys­tem, includ­ing cryo­genic tanks or LH2 and pro­pri­etary high-tem­per­a­ture PEM fuel cell and elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems. ZA2000 will sup­port up to 80 seat region­al tur­bo­prop air­craft such as the ATR72 or the Dash 8 400.” 

ZeroAvia has signed a num­ber of key engi­neer­ing part­ner­ships and has near­ly 2,000 pre-orders for engines and its com­po­nent sys­tems from a num­ber of the major glob­al air­lines, oper­a­tors and OEMs with future rev­enue poten­tial over USD10 bil­lion.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://zeroavia.com/

https://powercellgroup.com/

(Images: ZeroAvia/PowerCell)

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