Hydrogen To Replace Batteries In UAVs?
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עברית (Hebrew)
Researchers from the American University of Sharjah in the UAE have managed to develop hydrogen-based fuel in order to be used by the nation’s unmanned aerial vehicles industry. The development, achieved by a team of researchers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is the first of its kind among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and is a significant upgrade for the long endurance UAVs propulsion abilities. The experiment proved that with hydrogen fuel propulsion, the aerial vehicle stay up in the air for a longer period of time than what the UAV manufacturers are used to.
Dr Mohamed Gadalla, which headed the team of researchers, said at the end of the experiment that it was declared a great success, since besides the initial goal of developing a new fuel for UAVs, it also showed the vehicles can be flown with hydrogen fuel. The experiment proved that these aerial platforms can be powered with hydrogen fuel cells rather than batteries, which are the main means to power UAVs today,meaning that this is also an upgrade for the operator’s pocket which will be saving a significant amount of money thanks to this change.
Furthermore, thanks to this hydrogen propulsion, the vehicle consumes less energy and can operate longer, which makes it ideal for a number of tasks required of UAVs such as reconnaissance, protecting national critical infrastructures, rescue missions in disaster-stricken areas, evnironmental study and even operating as carrier in long distances. Gulf Today news site claims that someday, through this innovation development, the field of unmanned aerial vehicles could even take the place of satellites.
The capability upgrading the UAV performance is only in its first stages of experimentations but further testings will examin more accurately the improved endurance with hydrogen fuel cells instead of batteries, along with what payloads could be installed on the platform and whether hydrogen fuel cells could also be used as propulsion for completely autonomous vehicles.
