Liquid hydrogen is much more preferable as an airplane fuel than traditional jet kerosene, but the gas storage system eats up all the benefits. Cryogenic tanks are the solution.
Everyone has long known that the autonomy of airliners and their costs are in compromise. For now, it is impossible to create a nearly perfect and cheap aircraft with a significant range, but that could change if the world’s leading airlines decide to incorporate ultralight tanks capable of holding liquid hydrogen inside their machines.
Liquid hydrogen is quite suitable for use as aviation fuel. It has a critically low weight and a fairly high power density (when compared with jet fuel), but all the advantages of liquid hydrogen are offset by the fact that it requires heavy gas fuel tanks to store it, which nullifies all the economic benefits of this type of fuel.
If we imagine a situation in which aircraft designers manage to solve the problem of safe storage and use of liquid hydrogen on board, it promises to increase the flight range of airliners on one refueling by five times!
This is why American specialists have been working for the last years to create an ultralight cryogenic tank based on graphite composites, which would allow the creation of tanks for storing such gases.
The company has already produced and tested several tanks that have withstood the toughest tests with dignity. Even after several hundred refueling, soaking and simulated fuel consumption cycles, the safety of such storage systems is top-notch.
With a total weight of only 70 kg in a standard cryogenic tank, the tank holds 150 kg of liquid fuel, which is a real breakthrough.
Even if this feeding system is filled with pumps and other necessary elements for pumping liquid hydrogen, the weight of the “package” will still be less than the weight of the stored fuel. The future of aviation is behind this technology.
