Is PILOT PAY Affecting Green Aviation!?
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- Опубликовано: 4 май 2024
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Is pilot pay threatening to KILL the future of electric or hydrogen-powered aircraft?
A lot of companies out there are working on aircraft designs that will use some sort of renewable power source. So, what obstacles are they facing, and… what do pilot salaries even have TO DO with it??
Stay tuned!
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Below you will find the links to videos and sources used in this episode.
• Can sustainable aviati...
• 2022 ecoDemonstrator
• United - Eco-Skies: LA...
• Story : Air Corsica sh...
• Airbus #ZEROe Series t...
• First Flight of Eviati...
• Pipistrel Velis Electr...
• Green Flight Academy -...
• Paris Airshow 2023 - D...
• Rolls-Royce | Powering...
• X-57 Maxwell Electric ...
• NASA’s X 57 Maxwell Po...
• Heart Aerospace Hangar...
• Self-Flying Planes: Ho...
• Universal Hydrogen Fir...
• Glenn Llewellyn talks ...
• Countdown to #ZEROe: E...
• Liquid Hydrogen - The ...
• Flight VA260 | Ariane ...
• Launchpad: Cryogenics ...
• Video
• MAVERIC, a “blended wi...
• Countdown to #ZEROe: E...
• GE Passport turbofan m...
• Why Hydrogen-Powered P...
• United - Meet the newe...
• Bombardier CRJ200 - Re...
• Meet the Fleet - CRJ900
• CRJ 700 Engine Change ...
• E175 Shows its New Win...
• ZeroAvia Maximum Speed...
• Air New Zealand's laun...
• This is what the futur...
• ZeroAvia Dornier228 - ...
• The World's First Auto...
• Can We Ever Fly Withou... 
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I'm sure you saw those Boeing whistleblowers hearing, how shocking was that?! 🥲🤯
random question. Why not use electric energy for cruising? I mean engine are basically turbines already. So you can charge electric energy there & use fuel for lift up/ landing
Doesn't GDPR legislation mean that the service isn't so applicable in Europe though? Just wondering 😊
Excellent episode! We all hope that the aviation industry can decarbonise itself for the sake of the planet. I would include one blasphemous comment. Perhaps the industry should consider totally dropping the regional market in favor of high speed rail. They could then emphasize larger planes which would continue to use more pilots with larger passenger loads. Airlines would then be profitable providing service where they are needed most.
Well Captain.. considering that hydrogen detonates worse than C4😳as you can see »» ruclips.net/video/vSDmlj-u6QM/видео.html .... instead of burning outside the plane letting you passengers out like in British Airways flight 2276 and others 🤔........... and that after all.. to get hydrogen you need to use energy AKA Oil.. AKA Greenhouse Gases🤷♀........ if "pilot pay is threatening to KILL the future of electric or hydrogen-powered aircraft?".. I hope so 😠...
Reduce the pay of the board of directors first
nice joke. :O
That's not how capitalism works
@@konstantintokarev6133 Europe doesn't pay the top company executives so highly.
They are overpaid thieves
So relieved to see someone pointing out the actual problem.
@@konstantintokarev6133Then destroy capitalism.
If something (inevitably) goes wrong with a plane, I want an experienced and passionate airman to handle the situation.
I don't want to decrease the person's pay as i trust my life in them ....
Something that is not discussed enough is that almost all hydrogen in the world is produced by chemically reforming natural gas, which essentially partially burns it into H2 and CO2. This is the cheapest way of making hydrogen on an industrial scale, and making it from water and electricity is multiple times as expensive, and unless you are in France or Norway where most of the power is nuclear or hydroelectric, that power is coming from burning stuff. So basically the same issue as anything electric.
I was about to make almost exactly this comment. Even battery power doesn’t really count as zero emissions if you burn coal to generate.
I think the overall aim to make it carbon neutral is to use excess renewable energy to make hydrogen from water via electrolysis
Obviously a long way away from that point atm.
But hydrogen can be produced without CO2 emissions. The problem is a lack of alternatives. Batteries are to heavy, E-fuels need even more energy and bio-fuels are not available on the needed scale.
Of course today hydrogen, electric cars, heat pumps and so on are today not emission free, but electricity can easily be produced without emission and it just takes time to scale up. As long as we don´t have enough emission free produced electricity, there is no point in using it to produce hydrogen, but many countries will soon at least temporarily produce more renewable electricity than they need and then it becomes interesting. I think we won´t see a significant amount of hydrogen planes before the late-2030s or 2040s.
Yet another reason the fear mongering against nuclear needs to stop. Hydrogen can be easily produced using nuclear power, on top of the grid electricity it produces.
Don't we already have a solution for this?
In most places today we already have the problem of "extra electricity" on the grid and because of large scale solar panel use this tends to be even more problematic with each passing day (basically, we produce more in the time of day that we consume less and have trouble consuming the electricity or shutting down the producers in that period). If we find industrial usage for hidrogen at the scale we now have for oil/gas, then we can start using industrial solutions to produce hidrogen to basically normalize/balance the power consumption of the grid.
The cost would basically be offset (not in full, but it's still something) by the gains we'd have in electricity production/distribution cost by finally being able to balance the grid at the consumption level, rather then at the production level. From nuclear powerplants that produce constant energy to not having powerplants that "burn stuff" just because they're the fastest to shutdown/startup, to enabling every single house to have a solar panel and tie it to the electricity grid even if they aren't predictable sources.
Is pilot pay a problem? Sure. There needs to be more of an incentive to encourage a lot more pilots to spend the money to get certified. Boeing's numbers say that the world needs 650,000 pilots. That is a lot of money spent training. I would know.
I don't like incentives, as they tend to encourage people who aren't natural pilots or have the necessary skills to force themselves through the process...or the companies then feel the need to let them through even when they shouldn't.
@@pistonburner6448psychologically, rewards do work badly as you describe. Reinforcements can work, the difference is essentially timing. What is really needed is inspiration/promotion: the x-files made applications to the FBI increase a ton, as a silly example.
But also people outside of the normal pool of people need help getting started/ deciding to continue, financially, socially, even. That’s not the same thing as paying the non interested
Then maby they should start employing pilots with low flight hr that are certified but need more flight hr to be able to fly passenger planes thats the biggest reason why they have no pilots and most people give up on the pilot job.
Or just lower the prices lol
I agree with @pistonburner6448 and @ghost4fly659-we don’t want to incentivize people who only see a paycheck and otherwise don’t care about flying when hundreds of lives will be in their hands. But at the same time, the 1500-hour rule deters those who genuinely do want to fly. Getting 1500 hours in a small aircraft is so different than flying massive planes that it’s pretty pointless. The crash that resulted in that rule had two pilots who had more hours than that. I honestly think the reason for that rule comes down to forcing airline-hopefuls to have to be CFIs if they can’t afford to rent planes for 1,500 hours which results in bad CFIs and bad training (I dealt with a bad CFI who was just trying to get hours and didn’t care about training).
Hour-requirements need to be reasonable. Don’t lower the standard a pilot much reach to be signed off to fly a passenger plane, but don’t keep the minimum to be hired so absurdly high either.
Not a new project, but a fascinating one: the US Naval Research Lab did a series of carbonic acid- based carbon capture fuel synthesis experiments that was able to synthesize multiple different types of jet fuel from normal seawater. No infrastructure change for the users, same engines and aircraft, but the source is already-emitted CO2.
The main challenge is energy input, which gets better the hotter the reaction chambers are, with a specific call or to using waste heat from a nuclear reactor on top of using it as an electrical source for maximum efficiency.
They even were able to produce an array of olefins (the building blocks of plastics) for solids manufacture, and bunker fuel for ships!
Thank you Petter, but I still believe that there are lower hanging fruits than air transportation if you want to reduce CO2. After all, petrolium products are very suitable for powering automotive applications. Easier to concentrate on replacing coal power plants with nuclear dito. More bang for the bucks....
Just replace the “regionals” in the US with electrified rail running on nuclear…
We have to replace everything.
Hydrogen is really difficult to handle. As is obtaining it in the first place... Hydrogen being no more than energy storage. Quite inefficient at that.
As long as there are tax payer funded subsidies, companies are willing to work on it.
handling? yes
obtaining it? not so much -
its more or less just electrodes in water, there is a basic experiment that we did in school when I was 14.
if youre interested in how its done google for hydrogen electrolysis
If you use a renewable form of energy like solar to crack water to get hydrogen, then process that hydrogen with atmospheric CO2 to form methane, we already have robust storage and transportation methods for this fuel, and converting existing engines and platforms is much easier. This still ends up carbon neutral with a much easier transition that can be accomplished sooner.
@@Jimorian Methane is bad in energy per volume. Most fuels are either bad in energy per volume or energy per weight. Kerosene is quite nicely balanced.
@@JQLiFiCE Hydrogen today is obtained from Methane. Electrolysis of water takes far more energy than you get back. Manufacturers are working on the assumption that politicians will regulate hydrocarbon fuel out of the market. This will not happen and as soon as early next year we will see a return to sensible economics and electric and hydrogen will be sidelined once more.
The main problem with hydrogen is that it is very energy intensive to produce and store cryogenically. Also, if used for direct combustion on a jet engine, much larger volumes of it are required as compared to regular jet fuel to achieve the same range. This has been well studied and documented for decades.
Well kinda no. SAF is much more energy intense compared to hydrogen or to say it in other words: less efficient.
We will need to stop burn fossile fuels and these are the only option ( apart from something like synthetic methane, ammonia etc ). Otherwise aviation has to be heavly restricted or banned outright. Climachange - sadly - does not joke around.
Politicians are rarely ever physicists. They talk about 'smart solutions' while never actually producing a single smart solution.
massive reserves have been found in france and elsewhere but keep talking and hoping you wont get laughed at online the way you are in rl
@@charlesreid9337massive reserves of what? Water? Air? Because that's what hydrogen needs to be produced out of to make it 0 emissions, as is the goal here. Burning natural gas won't get 0 emissions, it'll just move them elsewhere
@@charlesreid9337 Massive reserves of what?
My Dad worked for Contential Airlines for almost 30 years. I even had a summer job with them. Every time you show a United aircraft tail, all I see is Continental, and I love the memories.
Brit here, have to agree, used to fly Continental quite a lot, with a lasting memory of Christmas celebrations on board!
Two issues that create a significant engineering challenge (1) hydrogen has low energy denisty - you have to carry a lot of it to have long range (2) hydrogen seeps its way into material making the material weaker - hydrogen embrittlement (HE). This is a problem impacting both air and ground transportation. In a single use rocket going into orbit, neither of these is an issue - but as a "fuel tank" and for "range" this is a problem - not to mention the cost associated with hydrogen production and the current difficulty of producing and transporting green hydrogen.
Hydrogen is dead. Only tax payers' subsidies keep the idea alive.
Aww it doesnt understand physics. It's so cute. It is tired of being laughed at for not understanding physics. Or how orbital hydrogen rockets work. But it watched a video and it's hoping not to be laughed at the way it was in grade school before it dropped out. It's trying s ohard
You forgot issue number 3: hydrogen creates combustible mix with air, that is quite easy to ignite, so having a storage of pure hydrogen on board is safety hazard.
@@ceu160193 That is actually a very easy to solve problem, given an aircraft is surrounded by fast moving fresh air. Continuous passive ventilation is very easy to accomplish.
The very poor energy to volume ratio is much harder to 'fix'.
@@abumohandes4487 Somehow it didn't help zeppelins not to burn.
What is really interesting in the tech world right now is sodium ion batteries, they’re safer than lithium, (they don’t explode when damaged) can be run flat without danger, and are able to be manufactured with very little rare earth metals. They have a comparable energy density to lithium with far less risk. They’re now hitting the market, and I wouldn’t be shocked if in the near future we see electric planes being developed with modular battery packs that can be hot swapped at airports.
I think that will be the tech that will flip the future electric aircraft market into the feasible territory.
Sodium can not beat the energy density of lithium, it is literally impossible, just look at a periodic table. Sodium is heavier and its redox reaction is a single electron process just like lithium.
@@realGBx64 they’re producing batteries that literally output equivalent charge capacity to lithium batteries in the exact same form factor. I have a box of them on my desk. Something about the effective charge staying higher for longer, I’m not a scientist. All I know is the tech is there and it’s being manufactured right now in compatible form factors and charge capacities and is able to power devices where lithium was traditionally used.
4:48 There's your problem right there. Those batteries stay exactly as you see them through the entire flight. With liquid fuel the aircraft gets more efficient as it goes. The aircraft loses weight as it flies, whereas the battery airplane stays exactly the same weight throughout the flight. Liquid fuel gives you as much power with the last drop as it gave you with the first drop. Batteries don't.
Ask a cargo pilot, what he considers the highest risk load. They will all say BATTERIES because if the fire risk. Not sure electric aircraft and batteries are feasible right now.
Love these two comments. Batteries are primitive technology that humanity has stubbornly held onto in hopes of reinventing the wheel. Ancient batteries were even found buried in ruins, they’re literally Stone Age!
@@johnchristmas7522 depends a lot on the batterie technology. Solid State Batteries or LFP are way safer then jet fuel. I think there is a lot of Potential left but it will take some decades til we see Battery powered Transatlantic Flights.
Problem is that most hydrogen comes from oil, so it's not really zero CO2 and takes a lot of energy to produce and therefore not really clean fuel.
But hydrogen can be produced without CO2 emissions. The problem is a lack of alternatives. Batteries are to heavy, E-fuels need even more energy and bio-fuels are not available on the needed scale.
People don't even want to hear the "just stop oil" bs anymore. Uneducated morons that never touched the grass think that world will turn upside down everytime they demand it.
Hydrogen can be produced from ocean water
@@SRN42069Sure, but it’s much more energy intensive, hence why almost all hydrogen is produced from methane.
@@Phantom-mg5cg And hydrogen is very low density. You either need heavy 400 bar tanks to haul it around or enormous and not very light cryotanks, as Liquid Hydrogen is 14 times less dense than water. Heavy as in 195 pounds for a 400 bar tank holding 13,000L of H2 or a roughly a kilo of hydrogen.
a quick google search shows that CEO pay falls into the neighborhood of 195 times what pilot pay is.
Pilot pay is not the problem. prioritizing short term profit is nearly always the problem in any situation where management is saying employee wages are the problem.
Most of that is stock options, not salaried income. But let's assume it was all cash. Delta as an example has 15,000 pilots. Fire that CEO and don't even replace him, and give his salary *only* to thy pilots, and you've increased their compensation by 1.3%.
@@EnDSchultz1 now, if you take away the CEO's pay to hire ONE more pilot, how much does that reduce the CEO's pay? I'll give you a hint: it would probably disappear in rounding.
@@kenbrown2808 well if the CEO's pay were all cash (it's not) you could add a total of 195 pilots if there were no CEO. Or probably less, because I'm guessing whatever inflammatory article you read just took the flat income for that "195x" figure and didn't include all the other costs (training, benefits, etc) involved in hiring and employing a pilot for an airline.
So I'm still lost as to your point.
For the record, I just checked and the salary of Delta's CEO is just under $1 million per year. The rest of his $12 million compensation is stock, stock options, and incentive pay based on company performance. Delta also has a profit sharing program that doles out hundreds of millions to its employees each year so all these calculations are all entirely hypothetical and invalid anyway.
@@EnDSchultz1 yeah, delta pilots are taking home 121% OVER the national average for pilots. but at the same time, the CEO is still getting a total of 67 times what the average delta pilot is getting.
Thank you. Jeg har argumentert for akkurat det du sier til folk som mener at batterifly er tingen. Godt at jeg finner ut at jeg faktisk har rett. ❤
Any mention of jet engines getting more efficient should also include that air travel is growing, at a faster rate than the efficiency gains. This means CO2 emissions from the airline industriy are increasing, not decreasing. This trend is set to continue, according to the industry itself.
While some other industries are decreasing their emissions while increasing their production, there is no clear path forwards for aviation to achieve this. One partial solution is to do what France did: ban short haul flights where high speed rail exists. And of course extend the HSR network. This works at least in places where the terrain allows railway construction at reasonable cost.
Bonus: It's a far more pleasant way to travel. Better seats, more space, bigger bathrooms, onboard restaurants, sleeper cars, less noise, you can get up and walk whenever you want, nicer views out the windows, and the trip starts and ends in city centres, not out in the countryside where airports are.
I think that taxes are a solution for this, a fixed tax on every flight will make short trip expensive while still adding not to much on longer flight.
CO2 is fine, we need it and we need more of it unless you want to eat rocks. 🙄
Yes, the induced demand through "every efficiency gain is used to get further passengers to fly longer routes" is very real.
BTW a short-haul ban can actually also make overall emissions worse by freeing short-haul airport slots for long-haul connections that wouldn't be able to pay for them previously.
@@JasaDavidHuh, interesting point! So the answer is to also restrict the airport capacity?
@@matejlieskovsky9625 I don't have an answer for that. I would like to see aviation to transition to zero emissions because travel is a good thing, but there's currently no technology that would do that for long-distance flights. 🙁 (Hydrogen means pumping water into stratosphere which means long enough linger time to have effectively same effect like CO₂ itself, other lack the energy density)
There are some problems with H2, which are not that obvious at first glance. H2 is the smallest mollecule in existence and it makes the choice of material for tank quite challenging. Materials that are impervious for other substances, can be poroštva for H2. Temperature is another big challenge, at low temperatures materials become more brittle.
And we haven't even touched H2 production, storage and distribution.
There are no silver bullets as a lot of people think nowadays.
What about using old blimps for in-flight refueling?
@@colinosborne3877 blimps for inflight refueling????!!! How? Compare the speeds, blimp's higher speed is just over a halo of airliner's speed. So, that's a bit of a problem. And it would have to be enormous to carry a useful quantity of H2. I hope you didn't think they would transfer the H2 they would be filled with.
And there are no old blimps around.
Great Vid - Its still a chemitry problem not an engineering one- Nothing comes close to energy density of Carbon fuel.
Exactly. Not to mention with batteries, we're carrying around the weight even once the energy has been spent.
Well, Nuclear fuel has a still much greater energy density, but its also even more complex, especially to balance eight and safety
@@ewenewen4060 You are correct that nuclear energy has a lot more fuel density. If I remember correctly, the Soviet Union tried that once. It did not end well for the flight crews.
Correct. Chemistry and physics. Without higher density and lighter weight battery technology this cannot scale to large commercial aircraft. Hydrogen is also not practical for large aircraft.
@@jamiesuejeffery The Americans started work on a nuclear powered plane. The mass of shielding is one of the reasons it's totally impractical.
I live in Moses Lake, WA where some of this footage is from. We have not only hydrogen test aircraft testing here, but full electric aircraft, and Boeing does a ton of aircraft testing out here. Mentour, try to make it out here sometime to see some amazing tech in person, especially at the Moses Lake airshow every June when companies show these prototypes off!
I'm a 68 years old Airline Captain ( Ret ).
Bean Counters will try to pressure Pilots to take the minimum of minimums fuel ...to the point of being Dangerous.
That's how much Important weight is , in the Aviation Efficiency Equation .
I don't think going " Electric " is an option.
Plus , just remember what happened to that Cargo B 747 carrying batteries from Dubai.
Kindest Regards
Electric will always be filled to capacity, though, as there is zero savings from under-filling them. The only issue is weight. My guess is that the solution will be to have flights with only carry-ons allowed and NO cargo hold - it will all be tanks/fuel cells/batteries. Or perhaps something like that blended wing design where it's basically the front half that's available, and maybe 2 levels/double level seating as well due to the same "no cargo hold" restriction. You fit 50-70 passengers in the front half and the entire rear is energy or hydrogen storage.
Just remember MH370.
It will never be an option. But as long as tax payers provide subsidies for it, companies will 'look' at it.
you dont think electric is an option. Oh do please explain the chemistry and physics you dont understand
The weight of the batteries is the real killer. The only reason renewable industry started looking at hydrogen in the first place is that batteries offer such a poor store of energy at large scale. I am not advocating for hydrogen either; poor volumetric LHV still (implies range will still be limited), difficult to handle / high storage cost anf general safety means it will take a long time to approve / certify as fuel, not to mention that it would require a complete redesign of the aircraft systems.
There will probably be a push for more SAF and it ll stay at that. There are easier / cheaper sectors to decarbonise first.
Blaming pilot pay for stalling development of electric aircraft is so dystopian. It's a corporate knee jerk blaming other entities to cover their own failings.
It's like blaming a RUclips review for killing companies.
Exactly. A product cannot blame the market for its failure.
100%, modern battery technology is simply impractical for large scale flight. The batteries are too big, too heavy, and generate for too much heat to be usable in aircraft. Hydrogen might theoretically work, but others have already pointed out the flaws in that approach. Namely, the only way to produce fuel grade hydrogen on a large enough scale requires burning fossil fuels.
eeey, MKBHD Refference.
@@bionicseaserpentMKBADHD
It’ll be very interesting to see which hydrogen option they go for! But it seems the electric hype is really coming to an end. Electric cars have been around a fair while now and we’re starting to see sales drop and many people returning to normal fuel. I think there needs to be a very significant break through for these projects to really become a feasible reality. As always, fantastic video! Thank you 🙂🙂
looking forward to 2 things in aviation...
1 - it finally becomes ALL metric
2 - battery energy density will approximate fuels.
Not sure which one is more difficult to reach..
The limitations of only a few airports having hydrogen infrastructure not only affects which routes can be flown, it also means likely complications when there are weather diversions, because it's quite possible that the airport being diverted to will not have hydrogen available. In other words nearly every weather diversion will become the equivalent of a mechanical diversion, resulting in an unflyable airplane. The plane will possibly be stranded for one to two days waiting for a shipment of hydrogen to be delivered by truck from possibly hundreds of miles away. Meanwhile the airlines will have to find alternate methods to get the passengers on to their destination.
I think that if the battery tech gets to where you could charge up say 2000 nm of range in 30-45 minutes , basically standard turnaround time, electric aircraft are going to get widely spread, at least for the short haul. Until then airlines will have no incentive to switch to battery powered aircraft as it will be a huge ding on the efficiency, with which they operate.
It is also the same reason BEVs sales plumeted once subsidies got cut. Everyone who wanted an EV, had the funds to get one and had the facilities to charge it got one. However, for most people it's just an extra hassle, that they are not willing to put up with, me being one of those people. Right now I work from home and most of the time I use my car maybe twice a week for 10-15 kilometers to go shopping, so a BEV would fit my use case perfectly. However I live in an apartment with street parking only and the nearest charger is a kilometer away. There are chargers at the shops where I buy my groceries, but they are expensive. So I either have to spend a lot more money on charging, which negates the point of an EV or deal with the hassle of driving to a charger, plugging in, walking home and then picking the car up an hour or two later. Not to mention having to spend a lot more money on a BEV as they are still more expensive than cheap ICE city cars.
You only need 400-500 nm and the rest can be handled via a range-extender/onboard generator. The efficiency of such a hybrid setup is vastly greater than a traditional jet engine and saves a massive amount on fuel as well. For really short flights, use EV only, for longer, turn on the range extender. Also, no costly engine rebuilds and half the maintenance. The fuel for the generator can be whatever works best.
Hybrid power plants are like pumped storage generation: they are great for peak lopping. You can see a use case for electric boost for TOGA, but in steady state, modern gas turbines are unbelievably efficient.
I love the fact that aircraft are proving the physics.
I guess the game changer will be be single pilot operation.
There is one other factor in all of this and that is "development" cost for both the aircraft and the pilots flying them. Development costs for a new aircraft are very high and they need to be factored into the per unit cost of the end product. The actual cost of material and manpower to build the aircraft is really only part of the price it is sold for. The millions of dollars or euros spent in development and prototyping has to be amortized on a per unit basis and needs to be factored into the sale price. There has to be enough demand for the final product to justify designing and building it. For example: $100,000,000 spent on development with a sales of 100 aircraft means that this factor is $1,000,000 per unit, but if you can sell 500 aircraft it drops to $200,000 per unit, making it more affordable and attractive to buyers. The same applies to the pilot factor in a slightly different way. If it costs someone $50,000 to get their ATP certificate and they only can expect to earn $15,000 as a pilot it would take almost 7 years to earn back what it cost them to get there, but if the pay was $20,000 then it would be only 5 years. This make pursuing the career more attractive and maybe get more people into the pilot pool. This can be why both aircraft projects or people going into aviation can suddenly stop. No sensible manufacturer will continue to develop a product that nobody will buy because of cost or usefulness. The same might deter a pilot because spending the money for training and find out the pay is bad or nobody is hiring would not make sense for many people.
This whole notion of hydrogen being zero emissions is LAUGHABLE. To create hygrogen takes various energy conversions, each having an energy cost. Next, the typical source for hydrogen right now is oil, and getting oil out of the ground is ANYTHING BUT zero emissions.
Actually, the nature of hydrogen now is not oil. It’s natural gas.
Theoretically, you can make hydrogen from renewable energy, which is basically a missions free but currently that’s very expensive
Every time we get a new video on this channel I'm thankful, because I feel like Petter's experience, temperament and holistic viewpoint would make him a great airline exec. Then again it's probably way more fun and less stress to talk about the industry than to run it! Thanks for your insight Petter! I wish every industry had a "Mentour" like you
As Boeing discovered, eliminating the risk of thermal runaway with lithium batteries is not easy. It will be even more challenging with much larger and heavier batteries powering a plane. There is also the possibly of battery damage in a crash landing. Adequate battery protection will be an extra weight penalty.
My only issue with the CFM Rise engines is how much more dangerous they will make it for ground crew. The engine cowling serves as a protective barrier to an extent, and that is not existent in the rise engines.
Energy density will be the main concern for many years to come.
I remember watching an interview with Elon Musk where he said batteries need to get better before they’ll be realistic for aviation
Love the show and watch all the time.
I truly enjoy the technical break down which has really kicked off my interest in commercial aviation.
I have a question for you and your fellow aviators!
Whith the work load you all carry in with aircraft set up checklist and actual flying!
My question is how do you mange stressful situations in heavy traffic and god forbid a aircraft problem ?
I am fascinated with cockpit footage but I am just a lay person, but it often looks like a third officer in the cockpit could be helpful.
I’m just curious of what you and your fellow flyers think
Chemistry has figured out the safest, easiest and cheapest way to use hydrogen in an engine a long time ago. To make it as compact and energy dense per volume as possible, just put your hydrogen on a carbon backbone structure. No pressure and stable at room temperature, more density. There's more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than in a gallon of supercooled liquid hydrogen. It's really that simple. And as long as nobody overcomes the concept of energy density, that's where it's at.
fusion reactors are probably coming before good enough batteries 🤣
would be dope ngl
I hate to be that guy, but are we talking about fission powered planes or nuclear fusion as a power source?
well, considering fission reactors power several military ships, and a large swath of the world, today, that's a pretty high probability.
Fission reactors have been around since the 40’s. I believe you mean fusion.
@@UnsolicitedContextnuclear fusion to use as power source to create more portable fuels, I would assume. It takes a lot of energy to get methane from our atmosphere. Same goes for storing and moving hydrogen
Tjänare! Before even starting the video I can answer the question: No, reality is killing the electric aircraft.
(And I can debate this issue if someone really wants to learn about or discuss the background, all the factors)
Right. Last I saw....battery capacity would need to increase about 18x before matching the energy density of jet A and even if this was achieved by some miracle...you have the issue of landing at take-off weight adding to the structures needed to be carried in the aircraft which reduces the efficiency. Just like with EV automobiles....short hops only and when the long term emissions are examined of the entire supply chain...they aren't nearly as 'clean' as their proponents claim. And...let's not even get into the debate about 'climate change' which is a red herring intended to supply an emotional reason to increase taxes on the world.
Is there really a debate about the electrification or hydrogen of plane? I mean, outside this channel and the manufacturers PR, the conversation is more about using less plane, using more train and electrifying car.
@@richardlehoux According to whom? Using less planes is just commies talking their usual nonsense, creating damage to society until they're finally voted out. Trains cannot replace planes except in very few cases, and even then it's the leftists themselves who have already sabotaged the possibilities for their optimisation. And they mismanage everything so trains provide a worse service and on top of it all are more expensive!
Electrifying the car is not a solution to anything, it only increases emissions and bankrupts society. It hurts people, impoverishes people, helps evil nations gain hegemony in the geopolitical situation.
Energy density of batteries is getting better by year over year
Larger heavier batteries is not the answer@@michalandrejmolnar3715
Another factor is the time it takes to prepare an aircraft for takeoff after a landing, especially for electric ones.
You’re the best. I look forward to your videos all week.
Battery-powered aircraft suffer due to the very low energy density of batteries versus kerosene.
You mention that you made a 40 minute flight in a plane with only 45 min of autonomy. This seems to cut pretty tight in case of unforseen problems. Are there no requirements for "electricity" reserves ? Even on a VFR flight there are reserve requirements.
he said it's 45 minutes of use with typical vfr reserves
Some of these factors are moot points depending on who exactly is running various countries. If the United States re-elects DJT as president and then executes on an infrastructure-first police:
Step 1: Nuclear Deepwell batteries to augment electrical infrastructure
Step 2: Pipe seawater inland and construct reservoirs
Step 3: use the "New" power infrastructure to drive desalinization plants to render the seawater potable for irrigation and consumption
Step 4: Leverage the reservoirs as HydroBatteries to "store" the energy produced by the Nuclear Batteries, which also strengthens the electrical grid resiliency as gravity-driven hydropower is relatively resistant to EMP shutdowns.
This puts the US in a position where attaching Sulfur-Iodine plants to the Nuclear Facilities to produce Hydrogen for use in fuel cells becomes dramatically less expensive due to sheer volume. Not saying SI plants are the best way to manufacture Hydrogen Fuel Cells, but they are one of the most efficient proven methods of deriving the required hydrogen.
Cratering the energy costs to produce electricity, then cratering the costs to produce Hydrogen Fuel Cells, and then backstopping that electrical grid with HydroBatteries, whilst simultaneously creating irrigation paths and croplands FROM those Hydrobatteries which in turn craters FOOD costs...
That turns everything upside down.
Most of the predictions made on power generation and power consumption today are framed around the JB/USDem policy of Infrastructure-Last, Destruction-First. In turn that means airlines have to expect the absolute worst conditions and rising costs with falling supplies.
To be fair, it could be Argentine's Javier Milei that gets an infrastructure-first policy implemented first. It could be Russia's Putin that succeeds in implementing infrastructure-first before other nations. Whichever country/nation gets infrastructure-first implemented will be the beacon that draws research and development and upends the status quo.
Or the status quo could just be maintained. Not likely as more people suffer under that status quo, but it is possible.
The best solution for the pilot shortage is better, faster and cost effective training. airline sponsored cadet programs are a must!
so before we start reducing safety by reducing the number of pilots operating an aircraft. we should be working towards a more sustainable training pipeline for new pilots to reach higher standards of safety!
Well, short-sighted airlines fired all their pilots during the couf (what could possibly go wrong?).
Now that the couf is over, they can't get their pilots back because they retired or moved on to other careers.
And now they can't get enough pilots to meet demand.
So they have to pay through the nose to hire new inexperienced pilots.
With no money coming in and no flights, paying pilots to sit was impossible
Hi Captain Petter, how surprising was that Boeing whistleblowers hearing from yesterday? 🤯😳
The weight of a fully charged battery is actually a bit more than a discharged one.
However the difference is insignificant, a microgram or less.
First question that comes to mind: "What happens if the cryogenic cooling fails for some reason?"
At some point it won't be about what the airlines want... It just needs to happen...
Hydrogen is clean but it is an extremely expensive fuel
And extremely flammable...
Yes, it really does come down to “economics”! But some groups are “predicting” that hydrogen could be reasonably cost effective “someday”! It is definitely a “We will see” issue.
@@Mentaculus42 If only producing it would be costly, we could work with it. But it's also very costly to store, unlike regular jet fuel.
Subsidy : an explicit admission that a business has access to funds forcibly extracted from taxpayers because the model cannot attract anyone who is willing to risk his of her own money.
As any student of history knows, neither politicians nor civil servants have a good record when it comes to "the white heat of technology" (a now historic reference in itself).
Additional costs? The eventual disposal of highly toxic components such as batteries and composite materials.
I've been working in the electric mobility industries for over 17 years, ten of which with electric aviation. Daher is continuing its electrification. Ampaire is making great hybrids and if VoltAero succeeds, it will have three variants from full-electric to mild hybrid and full hybrid. Battery energy density has shrunk down over the past 20 years and made more progress than liquid fuel or hydrogen, forever stuck at the same BTU. Cost continues to go down as well, thankfully for our smartphones longevity between recharges. We are now testing 500kWh cells considered to be the threshold for 19 to 50-seater short hops. And there are plenty of hybrid and hydrogen designs being developed. Not all electric and hydrogen aircraft are made public. Airplanes never started out carrying 500 people. It took almost a century to do that until the technology could handle that capacity. The same is true of electric aviation, which is only 20 years young or old. Just see how quickly electric propulsion has matured compared to ICE technology over the last 20 years with lithium-ion technology.
As far as hydrogen, yes, burn it. It could easily be made at secondary and tertiary airports, just enough to refuel at the next one. We have 2 to 5MW of energy using the footprint of a regular container.
I loved the Velis and was on the earlier version, the Alpha. What was the coolest thing was to not tweak any carb settings and absolutely no noise taxing next to loud Cessnas. Also, the Velis outperforms climbing from similar-sized models.
I've seen the Joby S4 and Archer Midnight fly. I'm flying on SkyDrive's SD-05 next year. And my team is designing vertiports for them. There are always more solutions than obstacles. We just need to be patient. This is aerospace and in this industry, things take time, thankfully. Electric aviation isn't rivaling conventional aviation. At least, not yet.
The big limiting factor at the end of the day is still battery technology.
Remember when anyone says "ZERO EMISSIONS" they are playing a shell game on you...
That means zero emissions from the vehicle's operation. But the manufacturing of the vehicle and all its components probably resulted in a lot of emissions! (Not to mention the fact that electrically powered systems are only zero-emission if their power source is 100% renewable, which very few power grids currently are.)
The production of EVs and lithium ion batteries in general is extremely detrimental to the environment. The burning of fossil fuels and the modern practice of sustainable wood harvesting has essentially reached an equilibrium, where Earth’s lungs are kept at an acceptable level, filtering our air. Even the extraction of oil & natural gas has been so rigorously scrutinized & regulated (at least in the West) that it has also been fine tuned to an equilibrium state with minimal environmental impact
As an Aerospace Engineer, I think hydrogen is a CRAZY idea!
There will be accidents.
One of the great benefits of Jet A-1 jet fuel is that it has a high auto ignition temperature (210°C) and is relatively hard to ignite. That is one reason why gasoline is not used on jets.
Have you seen hydrogen burning?
It really sucks that Jet A is such a good and relatively safe fuel. Hydrogen for aircraft seems like a steep hill to climb, the only steeper hill is the use of batteries.
> Have you seen hydrogen burning?
Yes, in aircraft (or rather, airships) of the last century. Safety is one of the reasons why these are not used anymore...
Ever heard of the Honda clarity?
@@alexgallagher4594there's a reason no one knows about it even though it's been around for at least a decade.
@@Mentaculus42 It is perfect as it is (at least for now). Aviation has become some sort of a boogie man in the discussion on climate change. This industry is probably the highest drive for efficiency, while we still have ships running on crude oil...
Don't get me wrong, I am no climate change denier! I just think this is not the battle to pick.
There's also another problem with switching from one big plane to several small ones. Airport slots. They're already in limited supply on the busier airports.
Here is another issue
Most airports don’t have the hydrogen fuel that these airplanes need.
And installing those or implementing those means more FAA regulations and a lot of money.
There's no need for electric or hydrogen powered aircraft because you can use electricity to get hydrogen from water, and then combine that hydrogen with carbon extracted from CO2 to make jet fuel via the Fischer-Tropsch process.
The two expensive parts of the process are extracting CO2 and making hydrogen. But you can extract dissolved CO2 from seawater more effectively than from the air, and the cost of hydrogen depends on the ever reducing costs of wind and solar power.
The US Navy did some research on this many years ago. The problem they have is that while a carrier fleet is at sea then have no easy way to maintain fuel for the jets. So they looked into using electricity generated by the nuclear reactors in the carrier to make hydrogen, and extract CO2 from seawater. They estimated that jet fuel supplied that way would cost just twice as much as jet fuel from traditional means. But the price of jet fuel has gone up since then.
There are many companies exploring the idea of synthetic jet fuel made from CO2 extracted from non-fossil sources, combined with H2 made from sustainable sources. A quick Google search shows e.g. Neste is just the one.
The advantage of using synthetic get fuel is that it's an easy replacement for ordinary jet fuel.
That sounds awesome!
I wish people would think ! ANY FUEL renewable or fossil will only end up costing the customer more and more ! YOU ARE NOT IMPORTANT ! And they will have their fossil fuel PRIVATE JETS , CARS , GAS STOVES and everything they want you to give up ! It's a scam people so WAKE UP !
Note also that the newest types of nuclear reactors can use part of the reaction process itself to aid in the manufacture of e-fuels, increasing the efficiency of the process even further.
Modern nuclear reactors could produce large amounts of cheap hydrogen and e-fuels if the manufacture of nuclear plants in larger numbers wasn't politically sabotaged by anti-science 'green' loons and other corrupt people.
Advantages of synthetic fuel are the energy density and the ability to use it on currently existing aircraft. However, creating synthetic fuel and scaling the process is often times depicted as a way too easy task. We know how to do it on lab scale and we can even create enough fuel for one or two aircraft with it as a general proof of concept. However, replacing all jet fuel that is currently being burned requires a massive build up of facilities for creating synth fuel and we need to get the energy also from somewhere. On a car, you get 20% efficiency at best with synthetic fuel and I don't see a reason why I should be better on aircraft. So, we would require four times as much energy. Given that roughly half of the loss happens after filling it into the tank, we can derive that half of the loss is happening during production, so we need to put in twice the energy that is actually then stored in the produced fuel. Every year, we use over 300 mio. m³ of kerosene worldwide. That is 2.6 PWh of energy. Double that to accomodate for the losses during synth fuel production, so we are above 5 PWh. That's more energy than the annular electrical energy output of 400 commercial nuclear reactors. That's a lot of energy.
I am not saying that we will see a lot of hydrogen, let alone batteries, in aviation in the future. They have their own technical challenges. I just want to raise some awareness that synthetic fuel is also not such an easy solution as some people like to believe. If it was easy, we would already be doing it.
@@fr89k "On a car, you get 20% efficiency at best with synthetic fuel and I don't see a reason why I should be better on aircraft."
Which 'synthetic fuel' are you talking about?
You're mixing and matching cherry-picked made-up properties of different fuels, my friend.
You make some very good points, as do many of the comments. Electric airliners are a pipe dream for multiple reasons and the physics surrounding this is not likely to change for a long time. While hydrogen is quite energy dense on a weight basis - 120 MJ/kg compared to gas let's say, at 44 MJ/Kg, on a volumetric basis, which is equally important on an aircraft the situation is reversed - 8 MJ/l for liquid hydrogen versus 32 MJ/L for gas. This means it would take four times the space to store the fuel which, as you point out, would have to be at the expense of passenger or cargo space. Probably the most important issue however is that there is absolutely NO hard data to suggest that the extraordinarily high cost of making this conversion would have any effect on the climate temperature. I'm not talking about computer model predictions, every one of which is seriously flawed, and none of which have been validated by observational data, but I'm talking about real hard data. Any government that would subsidize this type of budget-breaking program with the information currently available, or rather with the absence of real information on the true impact on the future climate temperature change would be guilty of gross mismanagement of funds. And let's not even get started on the potential benefits of global warming on developing nations.
Playing Devil's Advocate here; what I am going to say isn't necessarily my position on the subject.
What about nuclear power? It works for submarines, and a tiny plutonium-fuelled generator was put on the Voyager probes back in the 1970s. They're still sending signals back with fascinating data, btw! A lot less than during the planned mission time, but it's still there. It had been thought they'd pack in before reaching the heliopause, but at least one probe (if not both) have passed it.
(It's the crack of sparrows right now, my memory isn't perfect. OK, it's never perfect but it's worse now!)
Obviously safety would have to be extreme, but I don't think it's beyond our capabilities. It would be especially useful for long-range flights. And of course there would need to be preplanned methods of dealing with the "power unit" when it came to the end of its life. But assuming that could be done without polluting the environment, it _might_ be the greenest fuel, atmospherically speaking.
Any experts out there to condemn this idea?
What if that airplane crash? Containment of the nuclear system?
Crashes aside, Nuclear planes will likely never be feasible simply because of the shielding requirements. Shielding = weight and you need alot. This isn't a problem on submarines because they have plenty of heavy stuff available (water) to absorb the radiation. Theoretically as a plane gets bigger eventually shielding requirements as % of the planes weight would decrease to the point it might become practical but who knows if it's even possible to build a plane big enough. Better to just use a stationary nuke to generate hydrogen instead.
Great video, as always. For all of us who are used to work with hydrogen, and who are aware of the sheer technological challenges of doing so, the idea that someone really thinks about putting hydrogen containers onboard a flying thing gives me chills…
I suspect part of the answer isn’t in the air, but rather on the ground. If it becomes impossible to decarbonise short haul regional flights in a cost-effective way, then perhaps the answer is in electrified rail transportation.
Nope, batteries just don't have the safety and fuel density, same reason they're not used in other places. Not to mention sheer cost as well. Not really complicated.
“Batteries don’t have the safety”
Oh god
Batteries can work on short routes that are currently done with helicopters like an air taxi from Manhattan to JFK
Tech is not there yet. Pilot less planes should not even be considered. Thanks Cpt.
I agree
Pakistan Airlines tried a kind of a 'pilotless flight' with devastating consequences (flight 8303)...
And yet, pilotless F16s are already capable of dogfighting. I still don't think computers will replace pilots for passenger haul, but for cargo...
@@pistonburner6448Pakistan airlines isn’t good at flights with captains either though
@@solarissv777; hundreds of tons of cargo crashing into a city?
No thanks.
When is the next time you go for hypoxia training?
Take us with you.
It would be a fun RUclips short, trying to do simple mathematics problems under the effects of hypoxia
Just superb world class content from Petter time after time 🎉
Beyond niche applications, both hydrogen and electric are about as likely for mass market as teleporting Star Trek style.
As Scotty would say "You canna break the laws of physics"
Jap. Batteries be heavy.
Something needing government subsidies to exist is another way of saying that people don't see it as a good value proposition, and thus it can't stand on it's own.
If i had to guess, though, between hydrogen and straight electric, hydrogen is probably the most likely to be economically viable. Even if the battery tech was there, what would the charging times look like vs. uploading LH2?
The fossil fuel industry is drowning in subsidies. Its subsidies and government help all the way down.
Subsidies are usually meant to transition from one technology to another, but it's difficult to stop funding once it has started
I have an answer. The answer is Small Modular (SMR) Thorium Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) reactors, the Sabatier reaction to create methane and one of several ways to converter methane into propane. I will run through this:
1. SMR (small modular reactor) - Traditional light water reactors are extremely expensive because they are designed in a way where they cannot be massed produced, but instead are built on site. SMR gets into the reactors you build are massed produced in a factor and installed onsite already assembled for the most part. This alone makes the reactors a lot cheaper to build per unit of output, just build more.
2. Thorium molten salt reactors - Thorium is cheap and abundant. Could power our civilization 100% until the Sun turns into a red giant and swallows the Earth. Thorium gets bread in an MSR into fissile U-233 and then burned. Maybe starter U-235 comes from reprocessing spent fuel rods from light water reactors as light water reactors only use 5% of the fuel, so 95% of the U-235, more precious than gold, is still in the 'spent' rods. The molten salt system both allows high heat to be carried out of the reactor, the kind of heat you can drive a jet engine with directly and makes it easy to chemically separate out waste products, add in whatever you need, and in general conditions just right for a continuous reaction. The heat coming off of the jet engine can be used to boil water if you wish, say you want to desalinate ocean water and run a steam turbine. Molten salt is chemically inert, so it cannot catch fire. Molten salt operates at room pressure, so it does not need a pressure vessel as it is not under pressure. In case anything goes wrong, you can have a frozen salt plug at the bottom of the reactor vessel melt and then the molten salt dumps into dump tanks where the nuclear reaction cannot happen and it is passively cooled. In other words there is no way this could go all that badly and you don't need a lot of material to try to make it safe like the gigantic and costly material going into a light water reactor. I mean it is simply safe without it because it is just such an inherently better design. Because 100% of the fuel is burned instead of the normal 5% of a light water reactor and molten salt can carry more heat than water, the reactor uses 1/35th the fuel. Also because all of the fuel is burned, the waste products became completely safe on a human time scale. I mean this is a completely different and far better beast than light water reactors.
3. Molten salt is cheap to store. It is easy enough to have 'hot' and 'cold' molten salt tanks. Then just add more turbines and generators and you have dispatch-able nuclear power. Say the Sun is setting, so solar is dropping off and now producing nothing and everyone is coming home from work and turning on stuff. Thorium MSRs could have big tanks of molten salt just ready to be used as this surge in demand happens.
4. You combine these concepts and make large arrays of these reactors where you are setup to generate a lot of power in one place and then every small city / large town has at least one, you don't need to string power lines everywhere like you do with solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc. I mean you just produce the power at or near where you need it on a 7/24/365 basis and you use economies of scale to make a lot of these reactors on the cheap. Suddenly power is dirt cheap for everyone where with other renewables, everyone using a lot of renewable power knows their electric bills have gone through the roof and the sad thing is most of the power still comes from fossil fuels as the Sun doesn't always shine and the wind is just does not always agree with operating parameters of wind turbines and especially doesn't pay attention to instantaneous grid demand.
5. OK. So now you have a dirt cheap power source that will basically last to the end of time as far as anybody on planet Earth is concerned and humans can manage very safely due to the inherent safety of the design. Well, I don't actually recommend sticking this in airliners even if it was an original goal of these reactors to have nuclear powered nuclear bombers. No, instead these reactors can be used to make cheap renewable fuel. You look at the Sabiater process / reaction. This can take in CO2, which is that big thing we are trying to take out of the air and figure out what to do with and we have an answer to what to do with it, make methane. Great, but for various reasons you don't really want to use methane to power your planes and you certainly don't want to use hydrogen. What you can use is propane. Propane is easy enough to make out of methane and you can use the left over hydrogen to make more methane. Great. We have the answer, make cheap propane in an essentially closed loop cycle CO2 wise with cheap electricity. Propane is a fuel easy enough to setup for that you can actually retrofit existing airliners to use.
--------
Let's go over some energy options for airliners:
1. Batteries - bulky. Electric motors - Bulky. Battery - electric bulky with current technology.
2. Hydrogen - Very diffuse, even in liquid form. The fewer carbon atoms involved in a chain, the less dense the fuel volume wise. Pure hydrogen is therefor a very low density fuel. Hydrogen is very cold in liquid form and this makes it very hard to work with. Something missed is while NASA has worked with hydrogen for decades, they still needed to send out their Red team for the SLS to fix a hydrogen leak. Even after all of this time, NASA hasn't solved the problem of how to transfer LH2 into a vehicle without the fuel dangerously leaking everywhere and becoming an explosion hazard. No, I don't think we will ever get this to be airliner safe. Just end up with a huge crater where the airport used to be.
3. Methane (natural gas) - This is still cryogenic in its liquid form. Volumetric density is a lot better than hydrogen, but still lower than what you really want in an airliner. If left unattended / neglect of a bad airline company, you could have boil-off lead to explosions. Just not ideal enough I don't think for commercial airliner use.
4. SAF - This is made out of waste products of various biological materials. Apparently we just can't make enough of it for cheap enough. So we can use it some, but we are failing to get this anywhere near the 100% mark. Anyways, all of our airliners need to be redesigned to not have the engines killed by 100% SAF going through them. While you can design for 100% SAF, it means all of the older planes would have to go because they wouldn't be able to take it and everything would have to be replaced. Just too hard to do.
5. Propane - Now this is where it gets interesting. We already have a lot in terms of fossil fuel from the ground. It can be easily made from methane. We can easily make a lot of methane with the above SMR Thorium MSRs. This all consumes a lot of CO2 to make, so we are sucking up CO2 and making for a circular cycle, so no net CO2 emissions. We already know how to handle propane and could easily do this safely with current technology in airliners and at airports. Even Pemex seems to have propane figured out a lot better after they royally screwed up in 1984, 40 years ago. Jet fuel has a gravimetric energy density of 43 MJ/kg while propane is 50 MJ/kg, so more energy dense, just the thing being complained about in this piece actually being more energy dense gravimetically than jet fuel. Granted, seeing propane has fewer carbon atoms in its chain it is less dense volumetrically as in nearly twice the volume as jet fuel. But going to nearly double the volume is certainly worlds better than liquid hydrogen density. It also needs to be kept under pressure and for airliner use, you actually don't want it to get too cold as you want your fuel delivery system pressure fed by gaseous propane. Propane will turn into a liquid at atmospheric pressure if it gets cold enough and high altitude over the poles can get to be very cold. Propane burns cleanly, a lot more so than jet fuel. Propane is a natural refrigerant.
So now say you add propane tanks to the attic space of existing large airliners and leave the traditional center fuel tank empty, instead putting in propane into the attic tanks. Maybe only for max ferry range do you use the existing center tank or maybe even if an airport just isn't equipped with propane yet. Then you add as much SAF as possible to wing tanks, mixing in jet fuel to make up for the shortfall of SAF and for existing airliners to keep the SAF from killing your engines and fuel delivery system. It is very easy to modify jet engines to run on propane, even easier than the modifications to make them run on pure SAF. I believe existing airliners could easily be retrofitted for this. I mean no fuel pumps or anything and the propane is already a gas when it enters the engine and just flows straight into the burners. OK, maybe a quick boost in pressure to get it to chamber pressure. Just something very easy, at least easy enough to work with. After all, this is the fuel people commonly BBQ with and more towards this piece all the rage with newer small generators as it is so very easy to turn a gasoline generator into a duel fuel propane generator. Maybe for new aircraft designs you make the center tank into a propane tank from the get-go with all of the appropriate trimmings. Or maybe you go for an efficient thin wing with struts and make the fuselage bigger to hold all of the propane, no jet fuel or SAF in the plane.
I think we have a winner here if you are looking to green up aviation. If I understand correctly, you always want to burn the fuel in the fuselage first so you have less wing loading. So this means you should be focusing on burning all of the propane on every flight and then only using your SAF / jet fuel once the propane runs out.
Nice bot spam
The problem I see with subsidized regional air routes is that a subsidized rail service will likely fill the same job and more cheaply.
In my opinion, hydrogen is too dangerous to use as fuel given its strict temperature requirements. Methane could be a cleaner fuel with a looser temperature requirement than h2, but a loss of the fuel temperature control system can still cause an overwhelming explosion.
A lot on my work is involved with the handling, safety, shipping and disposal of rechargeable lithium batteries, and having experienced the very sudden explosive effects of an unstable lithium battery more times than I can count I won't even get into a hybrid or fully electric car. So, there is no way in hell I'll ever board any electric aircraft. Hell, you can't even check spare batteries into hold luggage so the airlines are already aware of the dangers these things present.
All the current schemes to decarbonize, planes, cars, etc, seem to require govt support or penalties. I think we need to let the market pick a winner over the long run with much less govt trying to pick a quick winner.
The problem with letting the market decide is that carbon-based fuels have a significant externality attached to them - burning carbon-based fuel incurs an environmental cost that isn't reflected in the cost of that fuel. If we're just looking at the up-front cost of the fuels - which is what the market does - carbon has a huge advantage. This is the kind of market failure that can only be resolved in other ways (like government support/tarrifs).
@@williambennett9764 -- The free market of ideas regarding the severity of the need for all this hasn't been allowed to operate for decades. Lots of institutional thumbs on that scale. Not only on CO2, but also with public health. Without this kind of free market, science isn't science, but it does help out a lot with the concentration of power.
If hydrogen fuel cell becomes the successful one, some interesting things may happen to the aerospace industry.
There already are commercialised applications of hydrogen fuel cells in transport. Two major automakers, Toyota and Hyundai, have put cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells in commercial production. But now it turns out that for automobiles, hydrogen power lost the game to lithium ion batteries, a much older technology. However, since we know that BEV technologies probably won't be suitable for commercial aviation at all, this means the huge amount of moneys Toyota and Hyundai burned may not be wasted. They have the best understanding of hydrogen fuel cells so far and these knowledge may be useful for greener aviation.
Of course, like you said, scales remain an important problem for hydrogen fuel cells. But just thinking about the possibilities of two automakers breaking into aircraft businesses make me wonder what else cannot happen in the future.
I heard of a startup experimenting with rubber band power, but the wings kept falling off when the plane landed.
Electric airplanes will never be mass adopted for a variety of reasons:
1) The power/weight density can never compete with liquid fuels. The best lithium batteries would need to improve their capacity 150x to match fuel. Weight is way more an issue in flying vs driving
2) Electric airplanes need to spin something to make forward momentum since they don’t generate thrust by heating up air. That means propeller flight which is slower and lower altitudes putting you more in weather paths
3) Along with going back to propeller flight means a louder aircraft
4) Fire risk is HUGE. Lithium batteries don’t just burn; they explode. When you puncture the battery separator, all of the energy is discharged all at once and firefighters will tell you what putting a lithium fire out is like. While there are safer chemistries like LiFePo4, those chemistries are even less energy dense
The best future for “green” airplanes is switching to biofuel
You know, there are actually electric jets? And that jet propulsion is actually, not about heating the air, but about pushing it. You can perfectly do that with an electrically driven turbine.
Have you heard that they're saying oil may actually be a natural creating resource. They say Rockerfeller called it "Fossil Fuel" so it came across as a finite resource.
I'll have to research more on it though. They say that they get oil from depths that Fossils would never be
@@solarissv777True but those guzzle even more energy than propellers and require a huge c rating. LifePo4 would be the best option (safety, discharge capacity, overheating resistance) but those batteries are like 1/400 energy dense as fuel. Your plane would barely get off the ground
The big issue is the scale of improvement we’re talking about. Below are the 4 major chemistries and their max energy density (not considering any other factors)
Lead Acid - 40 wh/kg
NiMH - 120 wh/kg (300% increase)
LiFePo4 - 160 wh/kg (33% increase)
NMC/NCA - 260 wh/kg (63% increase)
Gasoline - 12,200 wh/kg
So in the past 100 years we’ve increased by 6.5x. At that rate it’ll take around 200 years for batteries to reach petrol, assuming we can continue this level of growth. As economists say “past performance doesn’t guarantee future outcomes”
One solution is a hub and spoke network where buses are used instead of small airliners. This is already happening at PHL. I have been going to Transportation Research Board for over 30 years and there is still absolutely zero interest by aviation committees in working with us ground transit low life.
I understand what you are saying, but the fuel savings of 50% is still potentially far greater than the salary increases. The trick will be to see if they can scale up the electric models with maybe some sort of hybrid system up to the 50-70 passenger range. I personally think they will be able to do so when they figure out how to make sodium batteries a bit more efficient. Then you have a very long lifetime and wide operating/temperature range. Filling a jet up for a few hundred dollars per flight and no costly engine rebuilds is.. who cares about crew cost if you can still fit 50 people on it? So I think we are close to making this all work. Maybe 10 years. It is a shame that so many companies are stopping research, though.
Electric commercial planes make zero sense. And yes, the battery breakthrough has just been around the corner for the last 30 years.
Aside from producing a powerful enough battery, I see charging time as another major obstacle. It’s essentially the same problem as EV’s.
if you can refule in about 2 to 3 hr it is not that much more time than a stop takes now. and that is possible without damaging the battery.
@lordnobady wrong. Most aircraft turn around in 45 minutes to 1 hour
@@lordnobady The issue is that's a huge "if". A modern short haul aircraft will consumes around 2.5 tonnes of fuel per hour, at 43MJ/kg that's almost 30MWh per hour of flight. Assuming a 50% thermodynamic efficiency that means an electric plane would need 15MWh/h for the same frame & travel, which would require a 5MW link to charge a plane for a 1h trip in 3h. *Per plane*.
That's a lot more electricity than airports have available, and it would still only charge some of the more efficient planes at a rate of 20mn flight per hour.
And it's assuming the battery chemistry can even handle that sort of charge.
@@lordnobadyfuelcell doesn’t need a recharge
@@UnbeatenPath1 ok will need a bit more time but not enough to be a big problem.
I live in New Zealand and and we often take a 30 seater plane to hop islands from Wellington to Nelson, that's a 30 minute flight. Hydrogen or electric airplanes could probably service that role well. Most of our City to City routes are under an hour flight too.
Hydrogen production also has its own issues, currently most hydrogen is extracted from oil and other fossil fuels in a process that pollutes just as much if not more than current jet fuel. Hydrogen can be created through electrolysis however that process is slow and uses a surprising amount of electricity and is only practical in locations where there is an abundant water and cheep green electricity supply. The only real would example of a country where green hydrogen is abundantly available at a mass production scale is Iceland, this is primarily because they are using geothermal energy which incidentally they are extracting mostly from steam coming out of natural vents (hot springs).
I think electric aircraft will never exist since batteries are heavy and range is a nightmare. The answer to emissions problems is to be emission neutral, not necessarily emission free, and that's what SAF is about: if a flight emits X tonnes/CO2 and making the amount of fuel for said flight captures (X+ a bit more) tonnes of CO2 from atmosphere you are still cutting emissions. Also SAF can be used in existing engines and fuel plumbing with little or no modifications and that's obviously a huge advantage. Not everything can or needs be electric
"never" is a big word, but as is obvious, they already exist as short range aircraft. They may not be practical for airliners in the near future, but never say never.
Emission neutral has been a scam in every industry it has appeared in, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same case in aviation. There's just too much money in lying, so when you're the only one providing the numbers, the incentive is clear.
@BobHannent I mean as airliners , that's why I said never. Those small trainers are good online for, well, training
Battery tech. is still in early stages. I agree big airliners will not run on batteries in the near future, but work on new technologies like solid-state batteries could eventually lead to a battery energy dense enough to power a long range aircraft. That aircraft might look much different and might be much smaller than today’s airliners. Think Otto Aviation’s work in “laminar flow” designs for planes that will seat 8-18 passengers.
You can believe anything you want
What are the costs and emissions to produce and subsequently recycle a li-ion battery?
1. China and Mongolia have plenty of lithium and they would provide it for free, if we are nice to them and would also befriend them and help them achieve goals.
2. Once we liberate lithium-rich Ukraine, we will have limitless supply of free lithium and therefore production of Li-ion batteries will also be free as thousands of volunteers can be mandated to work for free in production facilities.
3. Emissions to produce them are also net zero, because even though there are some emissions, they don’t count, because Li-ion batteries are intended to be the solution for clean air and stopping climate change. Thus emissions, if any, are cancelled out by benevolent and heroic intent.
If my explanation doesn’t make sense, it’s because it’s based on very complex and deep analysis in economics, scientific data and obligatory altruism.
Orders of magnitude less than mining and burning fossil fuels. However, lithium ion batteries just don’t have the energy density to replace jet engines and fossil fuels for long distance flight. Whatever battery tech does eventually make long haul flights possible, ask this question again in 50 years.
For something like a plane the emissions for producing the batteries are effectively zero.
@@linvesel lol
@@markmuir7338 Oh, really? Can you enlighten us with some data about the costs of li-ion battery recycling?
I wonder if there is a way of possibly recharging the batteries during flight much like an F1 car uses KERS to convert kinetic energy and store it in the onboard battery packs for later use. Granted you’d use more electricity than you’d create but if you can use the spinning fans to create 5/10/15% of the original charge which can be directed back into the batteries the endurance problem could be lessened somewhat especially on longer flights
An ammonia powered aircraft would be an interesting concept. Ammonia can be stored as a liquid at 6 bar and catalyzed to hydrogen for a fuel cell concept. The world would need to make a ton more ammonia though and at that point, it probably just makes more sense to use renewable jet fuel and not do all of the energy conversions to make ammonia.
It is crazy to me how Americans fly 70 seater jets for short regional trips… for those kinds of trips we already have fully electrified modes of transport with low driver to passenger ratios… they are called trains…
America is addicted to creating as much inefficiency and greenhouse gases as possible.
I agree between moderate or large cities. But there are routes to smaller towns where trains don’t make sense but a commuter jet might.
A very good train infrastructure is available only in highly developed regions, even in Europe. For any government is far cheaper to build some airports then a comparable train infrastructure
@@Decarbonize11 that’s where you’re wrong. This is American cope.
@@Decarbonize11So what do you consider "moderate" and "small?"
Yeah, I don't really see us moving away from flying by burning dead dinosaurs for a while.
*dead ferns
It's not even dead dinosaurs. It's dead bushes and shrubs and such.
Nobody seems to bring up just how expensive hydrogen is. In my area which is pushing it, it cost $36/kg. Real world cost for driving a Marai is $0.79/mile making operation extremely expensive. I just don't see much future for hydrogen.
Another fact that nobody mentions is that water vapor, the byproduct of burning hydrogen, is also a greenhouse gas and responsible for between 60 and 90% (depending of which expert you ask), of the greenhouse effect on earth’s atmosphere. CO2 forms a feedback loop with water vapor to increase the greenhouse effect. The effects of having more water vapor in the upper atmosphere are not entirely understood.
What the airlines dont understand yet is with Li-Ion Batteries colder temps = Less Range the reason being is the are less efficient at colder temps. Inorder to get the proper proformance you will need a heat pump to keep the batteries at the required temp and that means less range as well look at plug in EV's in colder climates. There range is halved in winter compared to summer
The solution is of course, a smaller battery set and an onboard generator to extend the range. With safety margins, naturally. Sodium batteries, while less energy dense are extremely safe and can operate in the temperature range that is required. Once they figure out how to get them to 70-80 percent the capacity, I think we will see widespread adoption. They also have the advantage of a dramatically lower cost to buy and replace.
And it naturally gets colder, higher you get, so such planes will have much lower operational ceiling compared to current ones.
I'm waiting for Mr Fusion to use Hydrogen for planes. 😂
Just install a small nuclear power plant... 🤣🤣
@@davejohn3820 You know, there was such project. But it was cancelled for safety reasons - we don't need any aircraft crash site turning into radioactive fallout zone.
I wonder where Starship point-to-point would fit here
After watching this video, the phrase "cast iron biplane" comes to mind. I don't think commercial flying will ever be hydrocarbon free.
The problem is energy density. And that comes to kilowatts per kilogram. The storage for such energy must also be accounted for. This includes fuel tanks and battery encasements. The best I think we can do is to go with methanol. It has the least carbon of all the hydrocarbons. But I don't know what its energy density is compared to kerosene. It may turn out that methanol is so much lower in energy density that so much more of it will have to be used that the low carbon density advantage is all but wiped out.
I won't be surprised if the maker of this video lives to see airline flying become an expensive luxury for all but cross ocean travel.
Surprising level of anti-battery comments here. Critics are ignoring the ever-increasing energy density achieved by CATL. They also seem unaware of how cobalt and other elements are no longer needed to manufacture modern motive batteries. Finally, when batteries end their useful life in a car or plane they can often be further used in energy storage projects. Once they truly reach end-of-life, the components can be typically 99% recycled into the next battery being made. Thanks for the video.
You, in your praising of that Chinese CCP-controlled company, are ignoring the multitude of huge problems, horrendous costs, etc. of batteries.
In fact even the most basic thing which would've been taken care of if battery electric vehicles were really be introduced to reduce emissions = recycling, hasn't been taken care of. That is the most clear proof that it's all a scam and no-one is really trying to use them to benefit the environment or society (except maybe from the viewpoint of your masters, the CCP). Anyone serious would've required EVs to pre-pay for recycling and require the companies to receive the vehicles for the horrendously expensive and complex battery recycling.
"Can often be further used in energy storage projects" is unrealistic nonsense and you have no answers to all the very basic questions regarding that.
Today's EV batteries are not designed to be recycled. It is so incredibly difficult to do that no business for profit will get involved in the endeavor. Also, the battery's relatively short working life and necessary replacement early in the life of whatever vehicle they are a part of must be considered in operational cost.
Government subsidies should be eliminated. All green conscious consumers should happily pay for their contribution to a cleaner planet.
@@rickwoods5384 Yes, proof of what you say is undeniable: there is absolutely no mandatory funding of battery recycling in place, even though it would easily be implemented just as it has been implemented in other industries like the tire industry.
Whenever you buy tires there is mandated recycling fees included in the price automatically, and the company is required to take care of the recycling of every single tire they sell.
It's clear that there is no forced responsibility for recycling EV batteries and its costs because the point isn't to actually achieve any environmental gains, it's just to make a lot of quick money for their corrupt selves right now from bribes coming from China and the ability to use this EV lie to pay taxpayer subsidies to themselves.
@@rickwoods5384 There is a Tesla Model Y parked on my street as I write this. Its LFP batteries are ideal for recycling. I don't understand how you arrived at your generalised conclusion.
All I know is every time an electric vehicle is in an accident and gets towed to my repair facility, it has to sit in quarantine for 2 weeks, separated from anything else on the lot that may be flammable, surrounded by caution tape, and no technician can touch it until the battery has had time to discharge so the car doesn't explode like a cheap cell phone battery in your pocket.
There's at least one container ship at the bottom of the ocean full of brand new EVs because the fires can't be put out with water, they just burn a hole through the hull of the ship and sink it. That's an expense no one talks about, losing an entire ship and all its cargo. What's that doing to the environment? The technology is being forced before it's ready and the entire industry is an exercise in greenwashing.
My daughter and her family have owned 2 Teslas. They took a road trip from Michigan to Florida with a stop over in Alabama. There was such a long stretch between charging stations near the end of the trip, they had to turn off everything in the car, A/C (in the southern US in the summer!), radio, etc so there would be enough power for the car to get to the next charging station. They were terrified they would be stranded in the boondocks, on the side of the road, with their small children. They were also on the list to get a Cyber truck but ended up cancelling the order. My son in law and I are both in the car industry. I'm in repair and he's in design. He's given up on EVs entirely and sold his last Tesla 3 months ago.
With small electric planes with short ranges jumping between city’s ~200km apart you would also have to rethink the airport. Traveling 20 minutes to an airport, to be there an hour before takeoff isn’t feasible, because then you might as well take the car all the way. Imagine small city airports, similar to bus stations where you can board a small electric airplane to go to the next city airport!
A very interesting thought indeed. To me, electric and/or hydrogen planes could be of great service in especially island nations like Hawaii or several places in Southeast Asia and Oceania. It will be interesting years ahead to see in which directions the industry will develop.
On cities 200km apart (except islands) there is a solution that is both cheaper and faster than car and planes and that can run on electricity.
There is one thing you didn't mention when talking about the differences in using hydrogen by burning it in modified jet engines or by producing electricity in "fuel" cells used to drive electric engines. It is about true zero emission. Of course burning hydrogen in modified jet engines produces only water, but the combustion uses a very little part of the oxygen from the air ingested. At the temperature of combustion the remaining oxygen will combine with nitrogen producing nitrogen oxydes, and this is a pollution. Conventional jet engines are already producing these, but at higher temperature, more are going to be produced.
By the way, I put quotes around "fuel" for fuel cells because I think this is a misnomer, as far as I know there is a unique "fuel" you can put in "fuel" cells, this is hydrogen. I think the term was coined a long time ago when people were thinking it would be possible in the future to "burn" some other "fuel", like these which are burnt in conventionnal jet engines now, but I never heard of any progress in this direction. Of course it would not be a progress if the carbon of these conventional fuels is oxided giving CO2.
Individuals are talking about a 'hot swap' of batteries, when an aircraft reaches it's destination. How long is it going to take to do the turnaround that now happens in 1 hr? What happens when a plane diverts to an airport that doesn't have batteries? How about the safety of having so much battery power in such great proximity? Ask BA how that worked out on the 787.
For airliners, best near term future is building aerodynamic clean sheet design planes than a tube with wings we have now.
As for the bigger picture of lowering carbon emissions we might have to replace short and maybe some medium haul flights to high speed trains baby!
Or even using hydrogen propulsion and batteries for taxiing and all the vehicles used at the airports
> As for the bigger picture of lowering carbon emissions we might have to replace short and maybe some medium haul flights to high speed trains baby!
The best thing to do is to identify how much carbon emissions occur because of specific travel uses, and to see where we can reduce travel use by avoiding trips, where we can reduce travel use by reducing travel distance, and which travel use we can transfer into a different mode (ie, trains instead of flights, bicycles instead of cars). The first step is for people to understand how much specific modes of transport use per X distance transported.
For instance, comparing a 737 on a medium-length trip to a medium-sized car transporting that person, the 737 is much more fuel efficient. They're not always intuitive to guess.
@@sncy5303 > Trains aren't necessarily better for the environment, though. Depending on loadout, they may even emit much more CO2 per passenger.
Most high-speed trains run at 50%-100% usage, similar to airplanes. Given that they have zero cost to overcome gravity and have steel-on-steel rolling resistance (minimal), they are very likely to have much less energy required per distance travelled than any kind of airplane. In the calculations I did, a 737 got about 280 Wh per km (assuming 100% used) and a Eurostar got about 45 Wh per km (again, 100% used).
@@dascandythe problem with trains is that they usually cannot take the shortest direct route. They are terrain bound.
California seems to be having an unbelievably difficult time actually building a HIGH SPEED RAIL line. It is really very sad to see the massive screwup the California government has done on the this.
45 minutes for a SMALL PLANE ! So how long will it be before the possiblity of passenger flights across an ocean ! A very long time !
1903: First flight of a plane heavier than air. That was a very SHORT flight! So how long will it be before a plane of this kind can cross an ocean? A very long time, you might think...
But than: 1919 - First non-stop-crossing of the Atlantic in a propleller plane! Just 16 (!) years later!!
So I say: don't underestimate the creativity and skill of our engineers and inventors! As long is there is need to improvement (as there had been in WW1), astonishing things may happen... :-)
@@jfb-music7347 true but practicality matters, too
Like anything else, people who demand more for their services than the market will bear, their job will end up automated.
The golden age of the automotive unions was a case in point. The unions kept demanding ever more money for what amounted to a minimally skilled job, until the car companies bought robots who could do the same job better.
We're seeing the same thing in fast food restaurants today. Nobody is going to pay 15-20 dollars an hour for somebody to punch buttons on a cash register as they take your order. You just priced yourself out of a job. A computerized kiosk can do your job, is cheaper, more reliable, and doesn't call in sick or not show up for no reason.
People like to claim there is no manufacturing in the US, the simple fact is, there is a LOT. There just aren't as many jobs in that field as there used to be, because machines are cheaper and do a better job.
Sadly, i can see a day where commercial aircraft are mostly automated, and i don't like that. I mean, they are highly automated now, what i am talking about is no pilots at all.
Hydrogen combustion by existing engines was already in use by the Tupolev Airliners during Soviet-times.
The reason why all stopped doing this,
is that Hydrogen penetrates into nearly every known Material.
The Hydrogen-Molekule will then degrade the stabillity of the Material.
This leads to short lifecycle for moving or mechanical stressed parts like an engine.
Another big problem was that fires were caused, because hydrogen reacts with lubrication-oil/fat and hydraulic liquid.