Successful test flight with hydrogen-electric engine

Aircraft manufacturer ZeroAvia made a huge step towards introducing hydrogen-powered commercial flights after a successful test flight of a Dornier 228 aircraft with a hydrogen-electric engine.

The 19-seat Dornier 228 was the largest aircraft ever to be powered by a hydrogen-electric engine, said to hydrogen-electric aircraft manufacturer ZeroAvia. FlyingMag.com reports that the flight of the Dornier 228 retrofitted with ZeroAvia’s ZA-600 hydrogen-electric engine is a cornerstone of the HyFlyer II development program that aims to develop a 600kW powertrain that’s able to support zero-emission flight. The development project is partially funded by the UK Government’s Aerospace Technology Institute’s (ATI) program.

The aircraft’s left wing was retrofitted with the ZA-600 engine, which operated in tandem with a single Honeywell TPE-331 stock engine on the right wing. The tech details: the hydrogen-electric powertrain comprised of two fuel cell stacks, with lithium-ion battery packs providing peak power support during take-off and adding additional redundancy for safe testing. In this testbed configuration, hydrogen tanks and fuel cell power generation systems were housed inside the cabin. ZeroAvia added that, in a commercial configuration, external storage would be used and the seats restored.