British industrial engineering firm Rolls Royce has developed new fuel nozzles and other components that can successfully burn hydrogen at the required specifications for an aircraft to lift off. The tests were of a combustor for a Pearl 700 turbofan engine that powers the Gulfstream. G700 jet and the standard variant of the engine is capable of generating more than eighteen thousand pounds of thrust. Rolls Royce tested hydrogen combustion in a combustor of the Pearl 700 in Germany, and the firm reports that the tests were successful, as the combustor operations and emissions from the test were according to expectations.
Rolls Royce's New Fuel Nozzles Are Key To Burning Hydrogen At Conditions Required For Aircraft Takeoff
Just like a rocket engine, an engine that powers an airplane has several thrust and flight profiles. Engines are often at their most powerful at the time of takeoff since they have to generate adequate power to ensure that the plane's wings have sufficient air flowing beneath them to enable flight. After take off, the engines' thrust is adjusted to account for fuel consumption and aircraft speed. Then, during the time of lading, the engines are powered up again to maintain the correct descent rate to allow the plane to line up with the runway and to allow pilots adequate leeway to ensure a go around if needed.
Naturally, this means that the internal components of an engine are under significant stress and pressure at both takeoff and landing. One of these components is a combustor, and it is at the heart of an aircraft engine's capability to generate thousands of pounds of thrust. As the name suggests, the aircraft's fuel is set on fire inside a combustor, with the resulting energy responsible for driving an engine's turbines to ensure adequate airflow to maintain thrust and lift.
A key component inside a combustor is the nozzle. Also, present inside a rocket engine, nozzles are responsible for delivering fuel to the combustor, and they have to be engineered to withstand the extreme forces inside it. As a result, they are designed keeping in mind the fuel that is powering an engine, and for the hydrogen test, Rolls Royce designed new nozzles that are specifically tailored to hydrogen.
Hydrogen is one of the trickiest fuels to handle, as NASA discovered with its Artemis 1 flight earlier this year. However, burning hydrogen does not release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the fuel also provides greater power advantages to the engine. According to Rolls Royce, the advanced hydrogen fuel spray nozzles for the test had to withstand higher combustion temperature than their kerosene counterparts since hydrogen burns hotter than kerosene. They were also able to control fire inside the combustor by mixing hydrogen with air to control how the former burns.
Prior to the full pressure test to simulate take off conditions, the hydrogen nozzles were also tested at the Loughborough University in the U.K. and the German Aerospace Centre Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt in Cologne. The latest tests also took place at the aerospace center, and Rolls Royce shares that the tests allow it to gather data on the combustibility of hydrogen and its suitability for jet flight.
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