The EU has set the goal for air transport to be carbon neutral by 2050, and the greatest difficulty is for the aeronautical companies that manufacture large aircraft.
Therefore, these aeronautical companies that manufacture large planes (especially Boeing and Airbus) are very clear that the main PROBLEM they have in their business is the air pollution generated by their aircraft engines.
And batteries are not the solution to their problem. The issue involves changing the type of fuel to feed engines that must be capable of putting moles of more than 100 tons into the air.
Alternative fuels ( SAF ), also called biofuels that are obtained from different residues and/or plants, have been tested for years. But that will take many years and companies are looking for all kinds of alternatives in parallel.
One possibility, albeit not an easy one, is hydrogen. In various ways, work is also being done to try to obtain hydrogen in a non-polluting way, as it is a fuel that provides a lot of energy despite the difficulty of handling it.
Not long ago Airbus has announced that in a few years they will test hydrogen to feed an A380 aircraft (the largest model they have built and which is already out of serial production).
Airbus is going to work on this project with companies that manufacture aeronautical engines (GE and Safran), as they too are more than interested in reaching positive results. All of them play a lot.
In that prototype plane they will put special fuel tanks for hydrogen, as well as one or more engines in the back of the plane that will work only with hydrogen, and they will be able to test it in real flight conditions.
As is logical, first they will test the engines on the ground, then in flight, and in several years it will be seen what results they have reached. It is a fairly long-term project, but one that directly affects the future of their business.
As time goes by and we all see the problems caused by the pollution we generate, there will be more people aware of this problem and who may decide not to travel by plane unless it is strictly necessary. I mean, hardly ever.
And that is what moves these companies to look for alternatives to maintain their business. And hydrogen is a fuel that does not generate pollution, so they will have to see how to use it as much as possible.
Others will worry that this hydrogen is generated in an ecological way without polluting the environment.
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