[mkeespiet]

Search for “Bernard van Dijk” on LinkedIn. He is a professor on an Aviation University. He has a very solid story about why hydrogen will never work in airplanes. I’m addition, a well explained video about it: https://youtu.be/nrCE9duCej0

[lifeisstillgood]

An interesting video - but I am unconvinced this is "hydrogen can't work" - just the current approach won't work.

The point seems to be (watch the video) that the fuel is currently stored in wings of aircraft, which in layman's terms means the wings bend up carrying the weight of the fuselage, but the weight of the fuel is in the wings meaning fuel weight does not contribute to wing bend

Current hydrogen fuel power trains put the hydrogen into the fuselage in big tanks. This means the fuel weight now does count to wing bending and so fundamentally you can either take off without passengers or you can have your wings snap.

The answer seems to be put the hydrogen fuel in the wings. I could not find the argument against that. I suspect there is a lot more in the weeds in the industry

[mmaurizi]

Seems like you need a flying wing design so you can have gigantic wings to put your giant tanks (and also passengers) in. Maybe this https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/futuristic-flying-v-air... ?

[nickff]

>"The answer seems to be put the hydrogen fuel in the wings. I could not find the argument against that. I suspect there is a lot more in the weeds in the industry "

This is impractical with current technology. The insulation for liquid hydrogen in wings would be impractically thick and heavy. The structure for pressure vessels for gas in wings would also be impractical.

[dragonwriter]

The reason hydrogen in the wings doesn't work is because wings are thin and hydrogen tanks need thick walls. Also a lot more volume (hydrogen is not super mass inefficient as a fuel, but is super volume inefficient.)

[doctor_eval]

Err… not all the fuel goes in the wings, and not all planes put their fuel in the wings.

This argument makes no sense to me.

[nickff]

I believe that all modern commercial aircraft, and many smaller ones store substantial proportions of their fuel in the wings.

[doctor_eval]

Of course, but just because more weight is going into the fuselage doesn't mean the wings are going to "snap off" because the wings are empty. I mean, if the wing tanks aren't needed, surely you could replace them with structure that allows the wings to take the higher loading?

Even in the 747 and A380, the majority of fuel is stored near the wing roots, so the whole idea reads like a non sequitur to me.

[jillesvangurp]

This professor has a nice theory (hydrogen will never work in air planes), which is trivially falsified by simply pointing at planes that fly that use hydrogen as a fuel. That seems to have already happened. There are multiple companies that have flying prototypes.

Hydrogen planes are now an engineering and logistics challenge. The science is ancient history.

[walrus01]

I wouldn't say never, but based on the tankage requirements and tank structural needs for high pressures, it'll be limited to short range regional craft only.

There is still a lot of market in the size of things like the Q400 flown by Alaska Air. Like a Seattle to Montana flight.