Vaporware

摘要

IN THE NEVER-ENDING quest to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from aviation there is now lots of talk about hydrogen-powered aircraft. ZeroAvia has converted a Piper Malibu to run on hydrogen and Airbus has a proposal for an airliner. Is hydrogen practical as a fuel for airplanes? Will it bring any advantages? There are two options to consider with using hydrogen for airplane propulsion. The easiest is to substitute hydrogen for kerosene in a turbine. Instead of producing a molecule of carbon dioxide for each molecule of water, it's all water vapor, so the contrails remain! This is what Airbus proposes for its concept airplanes. But there might be metallurgical issues because of the possibility of increased corrosion of the turbine blades.