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There are some things electric power can’t do, like lifting the 787. But that doesn’t mean big jets can’t be green, or at least greener. A few fuel refineries and airlines are experimenting with Sustainable Aviation Fuels, known as SAFs. Burning just like common “Jet A” fuel, these fuels can be obtained from waste such as spent cooking oils. Some companies, for example nest, Use hydrogen to refine PURE fuel.
Although aviation safety organizations allow commercial airplanes to use fuel containing 50 percent or less SAF, at demonstrations, existing jets burned 100 percent SAF and “the engines are very happy with it,” said Ms Simpson of Airbus.
But SAF can be seen as a makeshift measure as larger planes happily fly emission-free burning pure hydrogen. In 1957, a Martin B-57B powered part of a flight that used hydrogen as fuel. A Soviet TU-155 aircraft in 1988 flew on hydrogen fuel alone.
For Senator Spark Matsunaga, a Hawaii Democrat who died in 1990, it was a missed opportunity—as important as the Soviets’ Sputnik satellite launching the United States into space. “We missed the boat once again,” he said, “and we can hope that the next administration will be more interested in hydrogen than that.”
Any mention of the hydrogen plane is meant to appeal to the zeppelins in the room. Although hydrogen has been used in ballooning since 1783, the future of aviation was dimmed on May 6, 1937, when the airship Hindenburg burned so clearly in Lakehurst, NJ, killing 36. your flames, immortalized in radio and newsreels (and a Led Zeppelin album cover) mostly resulted from hydrogen or the flammable paint used on the airship cloth surface. Regardless, the damage to hydrogen’s reputation continues today.
More recently, ZeroAvia experienced a bad news/good news scenario when the hydrogen fuel cell Piper Malibu Mirage M350 crash landed last April. The good news was that although the plane lost its wing, no one was injured. Better still, there was no Hindenburg-like fire without fuel to leak and no hot engine to ignite it.
“The hydrogen system itself has survived perfectly,” said Mr. Miftakhov. “The emergency team said that if it were a fossil fuel airplane, there would be a massive fire.”
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