Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Power Train Demonstration

Project Information

HyPoTraDe

Grant agreement ID: 101101998

DOI

10.3030/101101998

EC signature date 9 December 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 30 September 2026

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

€ 4 497 435,38

EU contribution

€ 3 999 697,75

Coordinated by

PIPISTREL VERTICAL SOLUTIONS DOO PODJETJE ZA NAPREDNE LETALSKE RESITVE
Slovenia

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - HyPoTraDe (Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Power Train Demonstration)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

HyPoTraDe aims to design, assemble, and ground-test a set of 500-kW modular, fuel cell-battery hybrid-electric DEP powertrain architectures, reusing fuel cell system residual heat for liquid hydrogen conditioning and thus increasing overall efficiency, as well as emulating system operation in a relevant environment (flight conditions above 15.000ft). The ground testing campaign will lead to characterization of the optimal system architecture, validation of failure mode mitigations for the groundbreaking powertrain, demonstration of complex operating requirements (e.g. operation at high coolant temperatures, start-up and shut-down characteristics, in-flight restart and battery charging, etc.), and assessment of the fail-safe capabilities of the modular powertrain.
The main impact of HyPoTraDe is the fast-track characterization of fuel cell powertrain architectures in relevant operating conditions, providing the members of the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking with a comprehensive understanding on the operational characteristics of modular fuel cell-battery hybrid-electric DEP powertrain architectures.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the first half-year, the work was focused on definition of the performance targets and system requirements at the aircraft level and decomposing them to the system and subsystems, for several aircraft type configurations from CS-23 and CS-25 certification classes.
Parallelly, a detailed digital twin development, supporting multiple levels of fidelity, has started. In first iteration, the performance requirements study results and digital twin will serve the ongoing tasks of detailed trade studies for the overall systems’ architectures, and systems’ thermal management as well as the analysis of the systems’ failure modes impacting their design decisions.
In the second stage, high fidelity digital twin will, as the outcome of the project after its validation, provide vital insight into the design of the derived products.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Optimization procedure for aircraft sizing for CS-23 and CS-25 certification class has been developed and multiple aircraft configurations have been developed. The procedure and aircraft configurations with their TLARs can potentially be published in scientific journals and conference proceedings.