Tech Briefs Magazine - July 2022 - 14

Sustainable Technology
Left: The Electric EEL flies over Maui. A mobile charger was
used for the demonstration flights. (Image: Ampaire)
Right: Ampaire's hybrid demonstrator Electric
EEL flies in Hawaii. (Image: Ampaire)
for pilot training in Day Visual Flight Rule operations. The
knowledge and experience gained from the Pipistrel's certification
activities have been used to develop the Special Condition
SC E-19 " Electric/Hybrid Propulsion System " to further enable
EA certification projects. In the U.S., the FAA also released Special
Conditions for engines from MagniX, based on a new
American Society for Testing and Materials standard, for electric
engine Airworthiness in October 2021.
The third challenge area is in the eco-system readiness for
enabling the EAs operation, e.g., clean energy availability and
distribution to the plug-in EAs for charging. This eco-system
includes stakeholders, such as airports from an infrastructure
and operations perspective, airlines who may need to modify
their existing process on ground and flight routing to take advantage
of the EAs capabilities, and the energy industry which
could be the supplier, on-site storage, or distributors for the
energy management.
Electrifying aviation at airports to date includes plugging
planes into gate power for Auxiliary Power Unit, electric taxi to
the runway, as well as electric tugs and ground equipment. Moving
forward, this means investing in development and scaleup,
from adoption of electric trainer aircraft to integrating the plugin
(hybrid) EAs. This is where the demonstration projects such
as 2ZERO (Towards Zero Emission Regional Aircraft Operations)
and SATE (Sustainable Aviation Test Environment),
sponsored by the Future Flight Challenge program of Innovate
UK, are extremely valuable as the public and the private sectors
come together to solve the systems problem collaboratively.
Ampaire's participation in these projects allowed us to work
with Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (HIAL), Exeter,
and Newquay airports and chart the course of aviation electrification
roadmap. In August 2021, the hybrid demonstrator " Electric
EEL " was able to achieve the longest nonstop flight of 418
nautical miles in UK, at a 38 percent reduction to fuel emission.
A mobile charger was used for the demonstration flights, which
incorporates the standard plug-in interfaces both on aircraft and
to the airport energy outlet with advanced coordination.
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This EEL demonstrator is a hybrid of independent parallel
architecture, which is not optimized. We estimate that for an
optimized parallel hybrid EA using SAF (at 50 percent blend)
for the combustion engine, it can achieve up to 90 percent
emission reduction with today's technology. As batteries and
electronics improve, smaller planes can move to all-electric and
larger planes can convert to hybrids over time, using a combination
of SAF and clean electricity.
If we want to reduce climate change, decarbonizing aviation
is a must - electric aviation needs to be an important
part of the solution. But launching the EA operations widely
will require the combined vision and focus of both the public
and the private sectors. The time to act is now. By building a
strong foundation to support the EA development, including
the regulations and standards for airworthiness certification
of these new aircraft and systems, and infrastructure for enabling
the EA, we can achieve something truly revolutionary
in our industry.
This article is written by Dr. Susan X. Ying, SVP Global Operations,
Ampaire. Dr. Ying is also a member of the SAE International
Board of Directors. For more information, visit http://info.hotims.
com/82323-282.
REFRENCES
1. " Could electric airplanes propel a third revolution in aviation? " Miles O'Brien,
PBS News Hour, May 26, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/couldelectric-airplanes-propel-a-third-revolution-in-aviation
2.
" Alpha Electro, the first serially produced electric trainer " , Tine Tomažič,
AIAA-IEEE Conference, Aug, 2020.
3. " Regional Air Mobility: Leveraging Our National Investments to Energize the
American Travel Experience " , Kevin Antcliff et. al., April 2021, https://ntrs.
nasa.gov/citations/20210014033
4. " Taxonomy, Architecture, Safety, Endurance Testing " , SAE E-40 Electrified
Propulsion standard publication, ARP8689, Q1, 2023.
5. https://arpae.energy.gov/technologies/programs/ascend
6. " Solid-State Batteries: The Technology of the 2030s but the Research Challenge
of the 2020s " , Faraday Insights, Issue 5: Feb 2020. https://faraday.ac.uk/
wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Faraday-Insights-5_Updated.pdf
7. " Boeing makes history with flights of Fuel Cell Demonstrator Airplane " , Tom
Koehler, Boeing Frontiers, May 2008, https://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/
archive/2008/may/ts_sf04.pdf.
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Tech Briefs, July 2022

http://info.hotims.com/82323-282 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/could-electric-airplanes-propel-a-third-revolution-in-aviation https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20210014033 https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/programs/ascend https://faraday.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Faraday-Insights-5_Updated.pdf https://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2008/may/ts_sf04.pdf http://www.techbriefs.com

Tech Briefs Magazine - July 2022

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