Three year research will focus on hydrogen

Jointly funded by Airbus and South Africa's National Aerospace Centre, the project will be undertaken by the Hydrogen South Africa Systems Competence Centre at its University of the Western Cape research facility.

Hosted at the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Aerospace Centre was established in 2006 to engage with government, industry, academia and research institutions, both locally and internationally, to promote competitiveness through research and skills development in South Africa's aerospace sector.

Insofar as Airbus is concerned, the airframe manufacturer reports that it has identified the hydrogen fuel cell as a future substitute for an aircraft's on-board auxiliary power unit. The aircraft manufacturer has already performed test flights involving fuel cells to power individual emergency power systems and it is now working on the technology that could permit the complete replacement of the electrical power systems with a multi-functional fuel cell.

With demand for air travel looking likely to double every 15 years has come the pressure on carriers and airframe manufacturers to become more environmentally-friendly. Given that almost every passenger aircraft designed and built over the last 60 years has had an APU installed in it tail, perhaps the time is now ripe for a re-evaluation.

It is known that by the adoption of a fuel cell there would be less weight involved, which in turn would contribute to a reduced fuel burn and fewer carbon emissions during a flight. Employment of a hydrogen fuel cell could enable an aircraft to generate its own water supply; and there could be a safety benefit through its ability to produce inerting gas that might be used to reduce the flammability levels in aircraft fuel tanks as well as for suppressing any cargo hold fires. The adoption of hydrogen could also potentially replace heavy batteries and conventional fuel tank inerting systems.

The project is to be undertaken at postgraduate level and will identify the factors influencing fuel cell performance, ageing and monitoring, before considering how these could be adopted for use in aircraft.
HySA is a 15 year programme that was set up in 2007 in a bid to increase South Africa's research efforts in the field of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. There are three HySA Centres of Competence, which are hosted by the country's leading universities and science councils.

Besides carrying out research, HySA also builds hydrogen fuel cells for small ground vehicles and can manufacture most of the crucial components. HySA's advantage, explained an Airbus spokesman, lies in its relatively easy access to locally-mined essential materials, particularly platinum group metals and mineral sands that give the fuel cells their catalytic properties.