Hydrogen

Story of Boeing’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell Aircraft

 

By Glenn Pew for AVweb.com
Boeing has flown a manned aircraft on hydrogen fuel cell power. The full text of Boeing’s release follows:

MADRID, Spain, April 03, 2008 — Boeing [NYSE: BA] announced today that it has, for the first time in aviation history, flown a manned airplane powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

The recent milestone is the work of an engineering team at Boeing Research & Technology Europe (BR&TE) in Madrid, with assistance from industry partners in Austria, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“Boeing is actively working to develop new technologies for environmentally progressive aerospace products,” said Francisco Escarti, BR&TE’s managing director. “We are proud of our pioneering work during the past five years on the Fuel Cell Demonstrator Airplane project. It is a tangible example of how we are exploring future leaps in environmental performance, as well as a credit to the talents and innovative spirit of our team.”
A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that converts hydrogen directly into electricity and heat with none of the products of combustion such as carbon dioxide. Other than heat, water is its only exhaust.

A two-seat Dimona motor-glider with a 16.3 meter (53.5 foot) wingspan was used as the airframe. Built by Diamond Aircraft Industries of Austria, it was modified by BR&TE to include a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell/lithium-ion battery hybrid system to power an electric motor coupled to a conventional propeller.
Three test flights took place in February and March at the airfield in Ocaña, south of Madrid, operated by the Spanish company SENASA.

During the flights, the pilot of the experimental airplane climbed to an altitude of 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) above sea level using a combination of battery power and power generated by hydrogen fuel cells. Then, after reaching the cruise altitude and disconnecting the batteries, the pilot flew straight and level at a cruising speed of 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles per hour) for approximately 20 minutes on power solely generated by the fuel cells.

According to Boeing researchers, PEM fuel cell technology potentially could power small manned and unmanned air vehicles. Over the longer term, solid oxide fuel cells could be applied to secondary power-generating systems, such as auxiliary power units for large commercial airplanes. Boeing does not envision that fuel cells will ever provide primary power for large passenger airplanes, but the company will continue to investigate their potential, as well as other sustainable alternative fuel and energy sources that improve environmental performance.

BR&TE, part of the Boeing Phantom Works advanced R&D unit, has worked closely with Boeing Commercial Airplanes and a network of partners since 2003 to design, assemble and fly the experimental craft.

The group of companies, universities and institutions participating in this project includes:
Austria — Diamond Aircraft Industries
France — SAFT France
Germany — Gore and MT Propeller
Spain — Adventia, Aerlyper, Air Liquide Spain, Indra, Ingeniería de Instrumentación y Control (IIC), Inventia, SENASA, Swagelok, Técnicas Aeronauticas de Madrid (TAM), Tecnobit, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and the Regional Government of Madrid
United Kingdom — Intelligent Energy
United States — UQM Technologies.

HHO Hydrogen fuel cell – O2 sensor voltage adder

 

This is a very simple unit designed NOT to replace the O2 sensor signal but to simply add variable voltage to it, thereby causing the ECU to lean out your mix and allow the HHO to be more effective. I have been building an EFIE from plans on better-mileage.com(sp) but I started thinking about it and realized maybe we’re making this a little more complicated than it has to be. Elaborate circuits do work (I’ve been building circuits myself for many years) but there is a simpler way to accomplish the same thing AND easier for a typical person to make. Not everyone is comfortable with breaking out the soldering iron and soldering components onto a circuitboard or setting up components on a protoboard to build something elaborate. I wanted to build something that anyone could make, without having to go to that kind of trouble. What you see in this video is a unit that doesn’t take the place of the O2 sensor. Instead, it adds extra variable voltage to the already existing O2 (lambda) voltage. The voltage fluctations the ECU expects to see from the O2 sensor are still there, so you don’t get the danger of the ECU thinking something is wrong and putting itself into open-loop mode (which causes it to ignore the O2 sensor, negating any gains you were trying to make). This unit allows you to vary the amount of voltage you are adding, but you don’t need very much. Normal operating voltage from the O2 sensor runs around 0.45 volts (450 millivolts) but fluctuates about every second or so (the ECU watches for this as a diagnostic). We want to add just a little bit of extra voltage, about another 0.4 volts (400 millivolts) or so to make the ECU believe we are running rich, causing it to lean out the mix and pump less gasoline to the engine. I am using a penlight battery for my potential in this unit but once testing is completed, I’ll remove the battery and use stepped-down voltage from the vehicle’s 12-volt system to supply power for my potential (eliminating the need for a battery that will need to be replaced periodically) and provide power for a small LED digital voltage meter on the front of the box so that lambda-v voltage can be monitored. The 10k variometer allows you to adjust the trim of your potential’s voltage, within a 10k ohm window so that you have control over how much voltage you are adding to the lambda-v. You will never need the full width of this “window” because we don’t need to add much additional voltage. I may add resistors to the pot to strictly limit just how much you CAN add and may add a rectifier (diode) to the sensor wire but neither is planned unless I find they are absolutely necessary.

See updated photos of the cell and COSM/oscillator at:

http://www.freewebs.com/jhines2/apps/photos/