Fuel Cell Systems for a Greener Aviation

The trend in new civil aircraft’s development is toward “more electric” aircraft and green sky. Fuel cell systems as possible part of the electrical supply in civil aircraft can allow reaching this target. Indeed fuel cell systems have high electrical efficiency, which can be used for on ground power generation and emergency power on flight, and are only producing water and oxygen depleted air as gas emissions. What it is also very innovative is that this “waste products” can be used to generate water on board and inert gas for the jet fuel tank as fire retardation and suppression measure. For several years the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics of the German Aerospace Centre (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) in cooperation with Airbus developed fuel cell systems which fulfil these functionalities for both aircraft ground and cruise operation. The main achievements of the last past years are the Antares-H2 development and tests as well as the successful milestones passed with the research aircraft DLR ATRA with fuel cell system test. This paper presents all the modelling and experimental activities of the DLR on fuel cell development for aircraft