Re: LOX/H2 jumbo jets?
- From: John Halpenny <j.halpenny@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:53:10 -0500
bob_jenkins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> How come the commercial airlines use jet fuel rather than LOX/H2? I
> would have thought LOX/H2 would be lighter and would give the planes a
> longer range. Is petroleum just cheaper?
There have been experiments with hydrogen fuel in aircraft.
Zeppelins had bags of hydrogen to keep them up, and diesel fuel to run the
engines. They actually had to release hydrogen to trim the ship as the
fuel was burned off, so some trials were made on burning the hydrogen. It
turned out that hydrogen worked so poorly as a fuel that a 300 HP engine
would only put out 50 HP on hydrogen, so the idea was abandoned as
impractical.
The eventual answer to the trim problem was to condense the water out of
the engine exhaust. The water produced from burning fuel oil weighs more
than the original fuel, so they always had ballast to match the weight
that was burned off.
--
John Halpenny
.
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