To date, there is no hybrid airplane available on the market. After the introduction in 2015 during the Paris air show in le Bourget of the CFM-EFESTO DARDO first hybrid airplane ever exposed, some major aerospace companies and other smaller companies have started the development of hybrid solutions. Nevertheless, none of the concepts proposed adopts a parallel hybrid architecture but only series hybrid configuration have been presented so far with lack of technical specifications. The series hybrid configuration in a single propeller airplane presents several disadvantages in comparison with the parallel hybrid solution.
The exclusive selling points are: extra safety by redundancy of power generation, power boost increasing the airplane’s climbing rate, pure electric clean 0 emission fly mode when suitable (for example flying over the mountains), reduced fuel consumption, reduced vibration and longer life of mechanical components thanks to the active damping system.
Impact of BLU-SPARK
• BLU-SPARK project aims at bringing into market a hybrid power unit to be integrated in an airplane reducing as much as possible installation issues further enhancing their acceptance on the market enabling potential users to operate at 0 emissions respecting the environment and complying with upcoming legislations. This is expected to have a huge impact initially in the airplane industry. The hybrid power unit has been conceived to be also commercialized as retrofit kit on existing airplanes that need to replace the old internal combustion engine, enlarging significantly the overall aerospace sector emissions abatement.
• The BLU-SPARK hybrid technology will disrupt the current airplane market by strongly enhancing the airplane performances (as it happened with the Kers technology applied in Formula 1). At the same time offering new eco-friendly features (like zero emission modes), and overall emission abatement. The market is global, and will be always more demanding because of the adoption of the restricted regulations that will impose the limitation in the utilisation of the internal combustion engines
• The concept of the benefit to the environment is embedded in the project: the same for the social aspect, since better environmental conditions mean better quality of life. Scientific progress: the project is a step beyond the current state of play in the airplane sector
• According to the project implementation plan the consortium will be ready to produce and sell the BLU-SPARK hybrid airplane and the BLU-SPARK hybrid power unit starting two months after the project end and it is going to commercialize BLU-SPARK airplanes and Hybrid Power Units within the 12 months after the project end.
