Combustion chamber

Electrical engineering

Physics

Automotive engineering

Organic chemistry

Process engineering

Retrofitting

Fuel tank

Hydrogen

Structural engineering

Hydrogen storage

Energy storage

Combustion

Engineering

Power (physics)

Storage tank

Aircraft fuel system

Chemistry

Renewable energy

Quantum mechanics

Fuel cells

Environmental science

Vapor lock

Chemical engineering

Waste management

Fossil fuel

Mechanical engineering

Hydrogen fuel

Energies

In the near future, the challenges to reduce the economic and social dependency on fossil fuels must be faced increasingly. A sustainable and efficient energy supply based on renewable energies enables large-scale applications of electro-fuels for, e.g., the transport sector. The high gravimetric energy density makes liquefied hydrogen a reasonable candidate for energy storage in a light-weight application, such as aviation. Current aircraft structures are designed to accommodate jet fuel and gas turbines allowing a limited retrofitting only. New designs, such as the blended-wing-body, enable a more flexible integration of new storage technologies and energy converters, e.g., cryogenic hydrogen tanks and fuel cells. Against this background, a tank-design model is formulated, which considers geometrical, mechanical and thermal aspects, as well as specific mission profiles while considering a power supply by a fuel cell. This design approach enables the determination of required tank mass and storage density, respectively. A new evaluation value is defined including the vented hydrogen mass throughout the flight enabling more transparent insights on mass shares. Subsequently, a systematic approach in tank partitioning leads to associated compromises regarding the tank weight. The analysis shows that cryogenic hydrogen tanks are highly competitive with kerosene tanks in terms of overall mass, which is further improved by the use of a fuel cell.

Modelling and Designing Cryogenic Hydrogen Tanks for Future Aircraft Applications