Fuel Cell Powered Plane Introduced
June 2, 2008
At the recent ILA Berlin Air Show, plane making giant Airbus revealed the first fuel cell powered plane. But don’t get too excited just yet. The fuel cell is far from being strong enough to power even a small commercial plane in the air. Rather, the fuel cell is being used to power the plane while it is on the ground. A good first step to reduce their carbon footprint, but still far from achieving their goal of a 50% reduction in the plane’s environmental impact by 2020. It should be noted that ‘environmental impacts’ is not just fuel use and carbon emissions, but noise as well, making it much less ambitious than it sounds at first.
The fuel cell technology is currently being tested on an Airbus A320 plane.
The air show also had several other significant announcements. Ross Walker, also from Airbus, has said the company expects biofuels to make up 25% of the fuel used by planes. Airbus also plans to roll out their PAMELA program (Process for Advanced Management of End-Of-Life Aircraft) in October 2008 at which time all new planes should be designed so that at least 85% of material used in their planes can be recovered at end of life.
At the show Boeing, Airbus’ main rival, had on display their one seater fuel cell plane. This machine made history at the beginning of the year being the first manned, completely fuel powered plane to fly.
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