Future fuels for aircraft?

karlog

Do they have any alternative fuel's for aircraft to fly on.

I mean they have electric and hydrogen fueled cars for the future, whats in store for aircraft? Especially commercial airliners.

Captain Chaos

Virgin tested bio fuel in one of their A340s, it was set up in a way that only one engine was fed from a bio fuel tank and the other 3 on the normal fuel.

partyatmygaff

Not for a good while atleast, plane engines have to be very very reliable and they can't adopt new not yet fully developed engines for safety reasons.



Solar is definitley not gonna happen, to transport 1 person you need a fuselage and wing size the size of an A380 and for it to be COMPLETELY covered in high efficiency solar panels. Thats for 1 person.

Tenger

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Virgin tested bio fuel in one of their A340s, it was set up in a way that only one engine was fed from a bio fuel tank and the other 3 on the normal fuel.

And the USAF have been conducting trials with bio-fuel and/or ethnol mix to reduce the reliance on oil.
I think the problem is that while bio-fuel can work in cars,aircraft need a higher energy output so bio-fuels are harder to get right.

pclancy

Interesting topic, Air NZ have also tested a 747-400 with one of its engines powered by a biofuel from the Jatropha plant. That was at the end of last year though, I havent heard anything about it since.

http://www.airnewzealand.com/aboutus/biofuel-test/default.htm

stevenmu

The French have been experimenting with manned electric flight (http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/12/27/french-manned-electric-plane-test-flight-a-success/) although I personally think that without some major development in battery technology, the weight of battery required will always make it impractical.

Mr Benevolent

The first purely hydrogen fuelled (fuel cell) aircraft took flight last month. It managed 95kts sustained cruise for a couple of hours. This is a big step foward.

Nforce

Both the US and the old Soviet Union had trials of nuclear powered aircraft.

Here ya go...

USAF Nuclear powered aircraft project

Soviet attempt

pclancy

Hard to imagine a nuclear reactor flying around the place. Amazing to think they put so much time and effort into it then realized it was a mad idea.

The NB-36 made 47 recorded flights between the summer of 1955 and the fall of 1957. All these tests were made operating the NB-36 with conventional chemical power. The R-1 reactor was turned-on on many of these flights, not to actually power the aircraft, but to test and collect data on the feasibility of a sustained nuclear reaction on a moving platform. All the data collected by these tests showed the program managers that the possibility of using a nuclear power plant to provide an aircraft with unlimited operational range was indeed at their disposal at this time. Impressive as the taxi and flight testing were for the NB-36, the complete concept of a nuclear powered aircraft was made irrelevant by advances in conventional aircraft and engine design and the public concern about the dangers of flying a nuclear reactor over their homeland. In the end, after expending no less than $469,350,000 on the nuclear powered program and having a concept aircraft flying, the U.S. Air Force shelf the program in the late 1960s, thus ending any major attempt by the United States to utilizing nuclear propulsion to impulse an aircraft in combat.@

Tenger

Nforce wrote: »

Both the US and the old Soviet Union had trials of nuclear powered aircraft.

Here ya go...

I thought that the Soviet attempt was a fraud. Watched a docu on discovery about the USAF NB-36 recently.

dogmatix

Tenger wrote: »

I thought that the Soviet attempt was a fraud. Watched a docu on discovery about the USAF NB-36 recently.

Aye - I think you are right. The story I heard is that the soviets knew nuclear powered aircraft could never be a practical proposition and deliberately
spread the story they had a working prototype so as to get the USAF to waste time and money on a similar program.

The supposed soviet nuclear bomber turned out to be a M-50 Bounder, a failed conventional design which never entered widespread service.