Alaska Air and ZeroAvia are developing a 500-mile range hydrogen-electric plane

[Mr. Sparkle]

Source: electrek



Alaska Air Group, the parent company of Alaska Airlines, is collaborating with ZeroAvia to develop a hydrogen-electric powertrain that will be implemented on a 76 passenger plane. When completed, the ZA2000 hydrogen-electric powertrain should boast 2,000-5,000 kW of power with a 500-mile range. As a new investor in ZeroAvia, Alaska Air plans to electrify its aviation to meet its goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2040.

Alaska Air Group is an aviation parent company with Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air Industries under its umbrella. This past April, the company signed The Climate Pledge, outlining a plan to reduce its carbon emissions to net-zero by 2040. This timeline was also led by commitments to improvements of company-wide carbon, waste, and water impacts by 2025.

The company is working toward commercial electric plane operations with its 600kW powertrain in 2024 as well as the aforementioned 2,000-5,000 kW version after that. With today’s announcement, Alaska Air hopes to help aid in developing ZeroAvia’s hydrogen-electric technology and implement it in passenger planes.

In a recent press release, ZeroAvia announced that Alaska Air Group has signed on as an investor. The two companies will collaborate to scale ZeroAvia’s existing powertrain platform technology to support electric planes that can carry more passengers longer distances.

Read more: https://electrek.co/2021/10/26/alaska-air-and-zeroavia-are-developing-a-500-mile-range-hydrogen-electric-plane/

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another source:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alaska-air-group-collaborating-zeroavia-100000328.html

[DFW]

1. Pretty cool, but still

When one has logged 5000 hours accident free, let me know.

[AllaN01Bear]

2. cool. inovate or die. good luck alaska air and partners.

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[MineralMan]

3. 500 Mile Range, Eh?

Well, that will do for short hop feeder routes, I suppose. However, they'll have to build in a reserve to handle ATC delays. So, I'd say the range will be limited to 400 miles, really.

We'll see if that's a financially viable market, won't we?

[jmowreader]

8. For Alaska it would be

Alaska Air Group has two brands: Alaska Airlines, which is mostly 737s, and Horizon Air, which flies Q400s in the Northwest. By using Spokane and Moscow-Pullman as hubs a turboprop with 400 mile range can service almost the full Horizon network.

[Deep State Witch]

4. I Continue to Be Impressed By Alaska Airlines

I flew them from Baltimore to Seattle and back recently. The planes were very clean and (relatively) comfortable. Yes, they charge you for checked bags, but who doesn't these days? Prices were pretty reasonable. Everyone was very friendly. There were no problems with maskholes - at least not on my flights. The only problem was that both flights were full, but that's because they were direct.

[truthisfreedom]

5. Sadly, most hydrogen is the product of carbon-producing

Reactions. Electrolysis using wind, solar, nuke or hydroelectric are exceptions, as well as very limited natural reserves (yes, there are some hydrogen wells!). But most hydrogen is still produced using steam-methane reforming.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. "Sadly, most hydrogen is the product of carbon-producing"

Yet the most abundant element in the universe is...

There may be an alternate way to generate H2 from water using the sun and a specially-designed electrode - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210719143405.htm

Sounded pretty cool.

[caraher]

7. Hydrogen isn't an energy source so much as an energy storage medium

It's dead easy conceptually to create H2 but it *costs* energy, and you don't get all of that energy back.

For aviation the attraction is that you store much more energy per gram of hydrogen than per gram of a battery. But you always need to ask, in assessing climate impact, where the hydrogen is coming from. At the moment there's a lot of greenwashing surrounding hydrogen because of what truthisfreedom says - the most economically viable source of hydrogen today is not carbon-neutral.

What Alaska et al need to do is develop a plane *and* a "clean" source of hydrogen

[BumRushDaShow]

10. As a chemist myself

I will say that hydrogen is an interesting (and probably the most interesting but also they most reactive) element that probably has potential beyond what we are able to envision and utilize it for. It's a matter of finding the best way to manipulate it.

[truthisfreedom]

9. and of course, as I clearly stated in my post,

electrolysis is an exception. it's not very efficient, easily wasting up to 70% of the input energy, however. yes, you may use the sun to generate it. batteries are much better for cars, however. they're close to 100% efficient at storing power.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. Not arguing

Just noting that the largest (so far inaccessible) source of hydrogen is (outer) "space" (literally). Same with helium, which is another element that has recently been in short supply.

Happened to find that article because I recall hearing about that research on the news over the summer but only now found the details and your post reminded me to go do a search to see if I could find something about it.

I think since so much focus has been put on solar for many decades, that breakthrough in electrode composition could be a way to utilize solar tech as a means to generate hydrogen in a more passive way vs using fossil fuels (or similar) to generate the electricity normally needed to do electrolysis. I don't think it is an argument about capacitive ability per se, which is something that would be a way to store what is generated. It's the generation piece that has been inefficient.