HYPOTRADE

project Overview

With the increasing demand in air travel, new technologies are needed to tackle the emission of CO2 and achieve the EU’s ambitious goals of climate neutrality by 2050, as set in the European Green Deal. Hydrogen is recognized as a promising option to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and the climate impact of the aviation industry. Especially the use of hydrogen powered fuel cells allows the construction of zero emission aircraft (including NOx). However, there are still technological hurdles to overcome before MW class fuel cells can be commercially used in aircraft.

The HyPoTraDe research project, funded by the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking of the European Union, sets out to overcome some of these challenges. It is focused on the development and testing of a modular high voltage 500 kW fuel cell battery hybrid powertrain that can be afterwards expanded into the MW class. It will explore new ways of using the waste heat of the fuel cell to increase the efficiency of the complete system, as well as test the powertrain in flight relevant conditions,

 


emulating a flight altitude of 15.000 to 25.000 ft. Since safety is an important aspect in aviation, the potential failures of the powertrain will be analysed and the necessary mitigations will be validated in the test campaign. The goal is to create a redundant powertrain architecture, that is capable of continued fail safe operation. During the project a digital twin also will be created and validated through data gathered during the test, to facilitate an accurate and fast prediction of the performance of future scaled powertrains.

The main impact of HyPoTraDe is the fast-track characterization of fuel cell powertrain architectures in relevant operating conditions, providing the members of the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking with a comprehensive understanding on the operational characteristics of modular fuel cell-battery hybrid-electric DEP powertrain architectures. Thus, helping to fulfil the ambitious goals of the Clean Aviation Programme for EIS of regional and short range hydrogen-powered aircraft in 2035.

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