Feasibility and benefit assessments of hybrid hydrogen fuel cell and battery configurations on a regional turboprop aircraft
Abstract
This paper explors different hybrid configurations and comparing their fuel burn benefits in an attempt to identify whether hybrid electric, hybrid with hydrogen fuel cells or a combination of the two will bring the aviation sector closer towards decarbonization. A notional turboprop regional aircraft based on the DeHaviland Dash 8 Q 400 was modeled using public domain data to create a baseline for present day. Then, technologies were infused to create a 2030 BIC vehicle, and finally, hybrid architectures were implemented to develop a hybrid 2030 BIC vehicle. An existing parallel hybrid electric architecture showed 10.3% fuel burn benefit compared to the baseline for a design mission of 1100 nmi. In this paper the polymer electrolyte membrane hydrogen fuel cell was infused for the same mission and the fuel burn benefits were calculated in addition to a combination of the PEMFC and the lithium-ion batteries for the same mission. Finally, seeing that the notional turboprop was based on the DASH 8 Q400, the typical mission fuel burn benefits were calculated for each of the configurations and were compared to the baseline.
