Airbus pioneers a superconducting powertrain cooled by liquid hydrogen

I have estimated that an Airbus A320 generates something on the order of 80 MW during takeoff. A hydrogen-powered aircraft, for the same freight load, will have benefit of efficiencies not available to an A320, so the needed power will be less, but I don&#x27;t know how much less.<p>The 0.5 MW system described looks like a good first step, but should be scaled up quickly. Results will be immediately useful for co-generation and energy storage on terrestrial power systems. For at least the next decade, that will be its only benefit, which may come to overshadow its aviation application, particularly if the latter encounters snags.

The failure modes are going to be interesting, to say the least...

This makes no sense to me. Don&#x27;t you also need cryogenic systems to keep the H2 cold? Wouldn&#x27;t those use waaaaay more energy than what you save with superconducting motors? Maybe they are talking about short haul flights where the H2 is ground cooled and then used as a cold sink but then in order to keep your electronics cold you&#x27;re carrying lots more fuel than you need. TFA was too thin to pass the sniff test.

Liquid hydrogen can do cool things, but how do you reliably stop leaks of the smallest atoms in the universe, even if they are supercooled?

Cool idea. I would be more enthused if it came from another company though. It seems like all the &quot;green&quot; projects Airbus does are aborted.<p>Remember their last electric plane? Canceled before the first flight. Meanwhile a couple startups are successfully retrofitting electric propulsion on light aircraft.

&gt;&quot;Liquid H2&#x27;s key drawcard to aircraft designers is its impressive energy density by weight, but Airbus believes there are serious opportunities to be explored in another of its properties: temperature. To keep it liquid, it needs to be stored cryogenically at -253.15 °C (-423.7 °F), and Airbus figures that if you&#x27;ve got a monster cold source like that on board your aircraft, you might as well make use of it.<p>The theory is that the<p><i>liquid hydrogen can supercool the entire electric powertrain down to superconducting temperatures, at which point resistance virtually disappears from the system, and efficiency skyrockets.</i><p>A powertrain designed to take full advantage of this effect, reasons Airbus, could get the same job done at less than half the weight, half the electrical losses and reduced voltages.<p>So it&#x27;s building one. The Ascend system will be a ground-based proof of concept developed over the next three years.<p><i>It&#x27;ll be a 500-kW (670-hp) powertrain</i><p>, with cables, controllers, electronics and motors that are cryogenically cooled by liquid hydrogen pumped around in a circuit from the fuel tanks.&quot;<p>PDS: Seems like this could have electric antigravity (&quot;electrogravitic&quot;) applications -- but as of this point in time, the theory of exactly how to do that seems lacking...<p>Still, the immense power (500-kW) and superconductivity aspect of things, seems to be there -- perhaps what&#x27;s needed is for someone or some group to do some electric anti-gravity experimentation with this infrastructure...<p>Can they get weight loss electrically -- even as little as an ounce -- using all of that electricity and superconducting apparatus -- in some new, novel fashion?<p>?

While there might be something to the underlying tech the current two most promising paths to carbon neutral airlines are synthetic fuel generated with green energy and better batteries. It&#x27;s highly unlikely that exotic, barely developed hydrogen tech that&#x27;s not even made it to the &quot;tech demonstrator prototype&quot; phase is going to work exactly the way they&#x27;re hoping in the end. A few % here and there from unexpected circumstances tends to make a big difference in viability, especially in situations where engineering margins or economic margins are thin (both apply to commercial flight).