Toulouse at the heart of the battle for hydrogen aviation
At the opening of the annual summit organized by Airbus this Wednesday, November 30 in Toulouse, the boss of the European aircraft manufacturer Guillaume Faury confirmed his ambition to fly a regional hydrogen plane in 2035, provided in particular that there is enough hydrogen available at the time of the launch of the program (in 2027 or 2028) otherwise it could be switched. The world aeronautical leader presented three concepts for this future aircraft in the fall of 2020, including a flying wing.
Bubbling of projects around the hydrogen plane
An ambitious roadmap which has brought in its wake the emergence of a multitude of hydrogen aircraft projects in the Pink City. ” The decarbonization of aviation will be where its soil is most fertile, that is to say in the South-West »assured Bruno Darboux, president of Aerospace Valley, a competitiveness cluster bringing together aerospace players in New Aquitaine and Occitanie, during the Maele days organized on November 29 and 30 in Toulouse at the heart of the Aeromart exhibition.
The Sud-Ouest has taken up the challenge of bringing out carbon-free solutions for light aviation. ” 16 projects have already been subsidized by the two regions of New Aquitaine and Occitanie to the tune of 16 million euros”, recalls Bruno Darboux. Among these 16 projects, more than half are concentrated in Toulouse.
Some have embarked on this niche right out of engineering school. Co-founder and CEO of Beyond Aero, Eloa Guillotin went through Isae-Supaero, a master’s degree in entrepreneurship from HEC-Polytechnique and an exchange semester at the University of Berkeley before embarking on the adventure. The start-up would like to first fly an ultralight in early 2023 with a retrofit to insert a hydrogen propulsion chain before tackling the design of a light business jet C23 with a completely redesigned architecture. ” We now have a team of around twenty people and we have succeeded in accumulate almost ten million euros for the project »say hello to Eloa Guillotin.
Other entrepreneurs have waited many years before seizing the right moment to participate in the emergence of hydrogen aviation. This is the case of Olivier Savin. As early as the 1990s, this Supaero graduate worked for Honeywell in the United States replacing the space shuttle’s fuel cell, but also on solar-powered aircraft projects. Back in France in the early 2000s, he joined the Dassault Aviation group, where he again led several hydrogen projects. In 2020, he left Dassault to create Blue Spirit Aero, a young company which has the ambition to fly a four-seater aircraft using only hydrogen by 2026.e. No question for the young company to retrofit, it is putting on a new device which will have twelve engines distributed on the two wings of the device.
” My 25 years of experience allowed me to imagine the ideal aircraft. Instead of having a single electric motor powered by a large fuel cell that receives hydrogen, I preferred to distribute my power propulsion immediately in the form of twelve small motors dispatched to the two wings of the aircraft. This design reinforces the robustness of the device against failure. The aircraft can continue to fly with up to eight out of twelve engines failed.
Then, the advantage of the fuel cell is to provide three times more energy than a battery. This will allow our device to fly 700 kilometers at 230 km / h with in other words nearly three hours of autonomy, much more than small electric planes powered by batteries, ”explained Olivier Savin recently in La Tribune.
Foreign startups mature their R&D in the Pink City
A sign that Toulouse has become a nerve center in the development of hydrogen aviation, many foreign companies have chosen to develop their R&D in the Pink City. The Singaporean H3 Dynamics, which now has around a hundred employees in Singapore, France and the United States, has a branch of around ten employees located in the B612. The startup announced a few days ago that it had flown its first hydrogen-powered cargo drone. The company is working on a more distant deadline on a two- to four-passenger aircraft that will accommodate six nacelles under its wings.
This summer, the Californian startup Universal Hydrogen has set up its European headquarters at the foot of the Toulouse airport runways. It is currently conducting tests from its European headquarters in Toulouse to fit hydrogen modules on board an ATR 72. An additional step for the startup, which hopes to put its hydrogen conversion kits for regional aircraft into service by 2025. .
At the beginning of 2022, the Californian ZeroAvia, which has 220 employees in the United States and the United Kingdom, also set up an antenna in Toulouse. Supported since 2020 by the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezosand that of Microsoft, Bill Gates, the startup is developing a hydrogen-electric powertrain to replace combustion engines in aircraft already in service. ” The strength of hydrogen ecosystems in France is such that it is an obligatory point of passage. Especially since we want to set up partnerships with all these players, the most important ones but also innovative startups”Explain Daniel Routier, director of ZeroAvia France.
A 10,000 m2 hydrogen technocampus
To accelerate the maturation of hydrogen technologies, particularly in aeronautics, a 10,000 m2 technocampus will start to emerge from the ground in 2024 at Toulouse-Francazal airport to be fully operational by the end of 2026. The test center which will be open to laboratories research and industrialists to test their technologies at low and high power (up to one megawatt). Bunkers could also be rented by manufacturers to conduct pre-tests in complete safety.
A gigantic project which will require 35 million for infrastructure and 20 million euros for equipment financed by the public authorities (the State, the Region which is carrying out the construction of the project and Toulouse Métropole) with strong support from manufacturers (Airbus , Safran, Liebherr, Vitesco, H2 Pulse).
“This Technocampus, I would never have dreamed itslips Christophe Turpin, head of hydrogen activities at the Laplace laboratory in Toulouse. With 10,000 square meters, we will have ten times more space available than on the current hydrogen platform in Toulouse with great originality by breaking the boundaries between training, university research and industrial research.»
This researcher who has been working on hydrogen since 1999 began his work shortly after betting on this technology. He observed ” an acceleration » almost ” unreasonable » on the subject over the past two years. ” A lot of money is put on the table, there is a lot of enthusiasm, but when we become aware of all the technical difficulties, the certification issues, we will have to be careful to maintain the effort over time.» This new aviation will also require a rapid increase in skills. ” These are trades that already exist for the most part and for which it will be necessary to bring a hydrogen coloring and not to ask for training to be created from scratch »highlighted Benjamin Fèvre, Hydrogen sector leader in the Occitanie region. The battle for hydrogen aviation is already shaping up to be a long-distance race.
