Hydrogen fuel cell stacks for aviation (H2Sky)

In H2Sky, a hydrogen fuel cell stack is being developed for use in the main propulsion system for flight applications. Hahn-Schickard is focusing on the development and optimization of fluorine-free membrane electrode units.

A fuel cell stack is being developed and preindustrialized in H2Sky for use in aircraft main propulsion. The development progress will be implemented in three stack evolution stages, which will also be fed into system development at Airbus. The starting point for the development is an industrialized stack platform optimized for automotive applications, which is adapted in particular to weight, energy efficiency, reliability and the operating conditions defined via the system. In order to meet these demanding requirements, a fundamental adaptation of the cell materials, the cell configuration and the respective manufacturing processes is necessary, which also includes the evaluation of innovative approaches. For cell materials, novel ionomers and innovative design concepts are being developed and implemented on a large scale for this purpose. At the stack level, both the flow fields and the stack configuration are adapted to the mode of operation and the high requirements, and novel manufacturing concepts are evaluated.

Hahn-Schickard's focus here is on the development and optimization of hydrocarbon-based membrane electrode assemblies.