Travelstart sponsors research into green aircraft
TRAVELSTART, the Swedish online travel agency, is doing its bit to save the planet by teaming up with the South African developer of an environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel cell powered experimental plane. Travelstart’s technology development arm, Travellab, is sponsoring the project to the tune of R 60 000.
Globally, aviation accounts for 4% to 9 % of human impact on climate change and is considered the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.
“Our companies want to do something substantial about the threat to the environment. Carbon offset programmes will not combat the real issues, but alternative power sources and innovations such as hydrogen fuel cell technology could make a huge difference,” says Travelstart CEO, Stephan Ekbergh.
With Travelstart’s help, Mark van Wyk, a technology developer at Travellab, plans to build the world’s first commercial two-seater hydrogen fuel cell powered aircraft. To the best knowledge, his is the only aviation-linked study of hydrogen fuel cell technology currently being done in South Africa.
Hydrogen fuel cells operate like batteries, combining a fuel (hydrogen) and an oxidant (oxygen from the air) to create electricity by an electro-chemical process, without any combustion. Van Wyk explains, “The process creates heat, electricity and water as an exhaust. This means that as long as the hydrogen is obtained from a renewable source, the entire process is neutral and truly environmentally friendly.”
Before attempting to built the two-seater commercial aircraft, Van Wyk will test the concept by building two proto-type Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
UAV Version 1 will weigh 7kg, be 1.5m long and have a wingspan of 4m. It will use a customized fuel cell manufactured by Horizon Fuel Cells in Hong Kong.
UAV Version 2 will use a fuel cell developed almost entirely in South Africa using local materials. The fuel cell will be reversible, meaning the plane could be plugged into an external power source and generate its own hydrogen. Van Wyk already has built a Test PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) reversible fuel cell, which is solar powered and produces about one litre of hydrogen per hour.
For UAV Version 2 he will use new techniques that are a world first and that will contribute to research being done internationally on the subject. These include the design of a cylindrical shaped fuel cell specifically suited to aviation with maximum effective use of space; the use of cooling fins directly coupled with the fuel cell unit; ram-air intake to compress the air for the fuel cell; and the use of hybrid technology (including solar panels on wings) to generate electricity/hydrogen.
Van Wyk sees home-made hydrogen as a major solution to energy supply and availability problems. “While I didn’t invent the fuel cell nor the aircraft, I believe I have achieved an excellent balance in blending the two technologies and would like to see this technology commercialised in aviation. This could be the dawn of a new age in aviation,” he says.
