Hall 1

Quatique Hall

Professor Cuddy

Written Communications 101

October 28th, 2020

Aviation World Taking The Right Steps

People on earth are traveling more than ever today. With this increase of traveling

through cars, planes, busses and much more we have a growing need to produce more fuel for

these machines but there is also an increase in co2 emission that comes with it. It is extremely

important that we find better ways to power our forms of transportation in order to preserve the

planet we live on. Lucky for us the aviation industry which is one of the most used forms of

transportation is working on ways to produce more energy and global efficient aircrafts. In a

CNN News article, “Why This Space Age Airplane Could Change Flying Forever” by ​Paul

Sillers​ ​gives us some of the steps and general information about creating hydrogen powered

aircraft and how it can positively impact the planet and society through the company airbus. Like

the car and bus industries it is crucial that other industries begin taking steps like aviation to

begin preparing for and enforcing a more efficient and clean future.

The field of aviation does have intent on going completely electrical any in the future, but

as of right now that isn't really possible. In the passage it is stated that, ​"Our experience with

batteries shows us that battery technology is not moving at the pace we want," says Glenn

Llewellyn, vice president of zero emission aircraft at Airbus”.(Sillers 12) This shows that the

field of aviation is more than willing to find a way to make planes electrical but because of the

way the battery technology is the primary set back not allowing us to have these electric planes.
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One could argue that aviation should have taken the initiative to create some sort of eco

friendly or electrical aircraft a long time ago, but one has to realize. This has been in the works

for a long time and isn't something that could happen as quickly as eco and electrical cars have

been developed. With the current technology holding these processes back the industry has to

think of alternatives, and this is where hydrogen powered aircrafts come in. There is now an

understanding the aviation is working diligently to get to the point at which they want to be. It

will happen eventually but aircraft are too advanced for the simplistic technology of even the

most advanced batteries we use today.

People may question well what is hydrogen power and how does is necessarily make a

plane more eco friendly. In the CNN News article were given a detailed description on how

hydrogen powered planes work, “Hydrogen can be used in different ways to power airplanes: It

can be combusted directly through modified gas turbines; it can be converted into electric

energy, using fuel cells; and hydrogen combined with CO2 can be used to produce synthetic

kerosene”.(Sillers 22) This statement from the article explains how a hydrogen powered aircraft

can be safer in the environment than standard fuel consumption. Using this hydrogen method the

aircraft essentially creates a synthetic fuel called synthetic kerosene. This process will allow the

plane to use the emitted co2 and this hydrogen to produce a synthetic fuel for the aircraft. This

uses the carbonizing problem as a solution.

With companies like Airbus attempting to make big leaps into this technology we could

be looking at a more eco friendly aviation world in the coming years as stated by the cited article

“Timing-wise," says Newby, "small hydrogen-powered regional aircraft could potentially be

available before the end of the decade”.(Sillers 27) Many of our major aircraft development

companies are starting with their smaller aircraft and will begin to work their way up to the
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bigger aircraft. They state that it will be a challenging task to make all aircrafts to have this

hydrogen technology but the goal is to make it happen and eventually have all aircraft be

electrically powered.

In conclusion hydrogen powered aircrafts is the future of today's eco friendly aircraft. No

one knows for sure how long it will take the industry of aviation to get to the point they want to,

complete electrical flying, but we do know for sure that they are working on a way to get there

and it starts with these hydrogen powered which produces this synthetic fuel. Granted yes the

aircrafts still does need to consume regular fuel for this to work but it doesn't consume and

emmite as much as it was before. Look at this as progress in the making. Until a technology safe

and advanced enough for aircraft to make them completely electric is found, workarounds must

be done and it all starts with hydrogen aircraft.

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References

Sillers, Paul. “Why This Space Age Airplane Could Change Flying Forever.” ​CNN,​ Cable

News Network, 3 Oct. 2020,

​https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/airbus-zero-emissions-concept-plane/index.html