ZeroAvia, a British startup that develops clean engine solutions, has just performed a historic act in world aviation. A Dornier 228 received a propellant fueled with hydrogen and performed a 10-minute test flight in complete safety, becoming the largest aircraft in the world to carry out this procedure with fuel.
For this exercise, ZeroAvia modified only one of the Dornier’s two engines. The right engine was a conventional turboprop fueled with kerosene, while the other was an electric propeller, with a battery and fuel cell filled with hydrogen.
With mixed financing between private capital and the British government, the HyFlyer II project has, in this first phase, the development of hydrogen engines that can sustain an aircraft of up to 19 passengers, as is the case of the German Dornier 228. But ZeroAvia’s plans are even more ambitious.
The company’s idea is to evolve the project and develop engines until reaching 90-seat aircraft. In the next decade, the expectation is that the work will be so advanced that airplanes narrow body, that is, commercial aircraft with single aisles, such as the Airbus A320 or the Boeing 737, can receive engines and hydrogen from the company. In this case, we are talking about models capable of carrying 200 passengers.
“This is an important moment, not just for ZeroAvia, but for the aviation industry as a whole, as it shows that true zero-emissions commercial flying is just a few years away. The first flight of our 19-seat aircraft shows how scalable our technology is and highlights the rapid progress towards zero-emission propulsion. This is just the beginning – we are building the future of sustainable, zero-climate aviation,” said Val Miftakhov, CEO and co-founder of ZeroAvia.
How does ZeroAvia’s hydrogen engine work?
The twin-engine aircraft was retrofitted to incorporate ZeroAvia’s hydrogen-electric engine in the left wing, which then operated alongside a single Honeywell TPE-331 standard engine in the right wing. With this test configuration, the hydrogen-electric powertrain houses two fuel cell tanks, with the lithium-ion batteries providing peak power support during takeoff, adding additional redundancy for safe testing.
In this test configuration, hydrogen tanks and fuel cell power generation systems were housed inside the cabin, so the company had to remove the seats just for this exercise.
When will the commercial launch be?
ZeroAvia expects to start selling engines for aircraft with up to 19 passengers from 2025.
