Originally Posted by
Winemaker
The issue with hydrogen is not weight of the fuel, but rather volume and storage method. If it's gaseous compressed hydrogen the tanks weigh a ton and you need a lot of them. If it's liquid hydrogen there are other issues storing and using a cryogenic fluid, as well as volume. I've run the numbers several times and I just don't see how it will be a viable aircraft fuel source. Buses and trucks, yes; flying things not so much.
Exactly. The storage issues with H2 on an aircraft are simply insurmountable for anything approaching "long range". You
must have spherical or cylindrical tanks (either gaseous or liquid), so it's not going in the wing. Putting it in the fuselage means it's in close proximity to passengers - plus even with it's light weight, enough H2 to fly thousands of miles needs to be close to the CG, so it needs to be over the wing - would you want to be a passenger in an aircraft with a massive tank of H2 in the middle? So it needs to be in massive pods outside the fuselage - meaning lots of extra drag.
Taking 'green' H2, combining it with CO2 and making it into a hydrocarbon 'e-fuel' is a far more viable solution than H2 powered long range aircraft.