Exploration of a Reverse Turbo-Brayton Cryocooler for Carbon Neutral Aeronautical Applications: Integrated Cryocooler Design and Tank Modeling for Cryogenic Liquid Hydrogen in Long Range Flight

Climate change is a pressing issue. Hydrogen aircraft are an excellent alternative to current kerosene aircraft, and appear to be the most viable long-term solution for net-zero flight. One of the main challenges for hydrogen aircraft is to sustain a low boil-off rate. This research explores the solution of active cooling of the LH2 mixture in...

Airport Liquid Hydrogen Storage Facilities: Techno-Economic Assesment

Large-Scale Hydrogen Liquefaction: Process Modelling, Viability and Techno-economic Analysis

Hydrogen's competitiveness as a sustainable energy carrier depends greatly on its transportation and storage costs. Liquefying hydrogen for these purposes offers benefits like purity, versatility, and higher density. However, current industrial hydrogen liquefaction processes face efficiency and cost challenges, with a second-law efficiency...

Simulating the Refuelling Process for a Liquid Hydrogen-Powered Commercial Aircraft

This thesis focuses on simulating the refuelling process for a liquid hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft. The liquid hydrogen is intended to flow from the refuelling truck, through a transfer line, into the aircraft’s tank using pressure feed. The numerical simulation was built upon an existing tank model, however it did not consider the...

Employing Liquid Hydrogen for Fuel Cell Heat Recovery in Aircraft

This work describes the benefits of exploiting cold hydrogen in a 2 MW liquid hydrogen-electric powertrain. Hydrogen is stored in a liquid state in the aircraft at its boiling point of 20 K (at 1 bar). Fuel cells require an input temperature of at least zero degrees Celsius to operate. The heating process can either be done by drawing current...

An Analysis of the Transition to Liquid Hydrogen Infrastructure for Airports

Within this thesis report the transition to LH2 infrastructure at the airport is tackled. Specifically, how the airport can develop and adopt the infrastructure needed for LH2 supply logistics, storage, and refueling is researched. This process can be defined as a socio-technical transition in which a new niche technology (LH2 aviation...

Architecture study for in-orbit long term cryogenic storage

The space community is currently focusing on defining system architectures able to perform multiple interplanetary missions to support deep space exploration. In particular, placing orbital propellant depots in strategic locations in space would allow to increase the useful payload mass at launch. Despite all the efforts that are being invested...

Optimisation-based system designs for deep offshore wind farms including power to gas technologies

A large deployment of energy storage solutions will be required by the stochastic and non-controllable nature of most renewable energy sources when planning for higher penetration of renewable electricity into the energy mix. Various solutions have been suggested for dealing with medium- and long-term energy storage. Hydrogen and ammonia are...

Fuel Tank Integration for Hydrogen Airliners

Zero-carbon-dioxide-emitting hydrogen-powered aircraft have, in recent decades, come back on the stage as promising protagonists in the fight against global warming. Nevertheless, most recent studies agree that hydrogen aircraft would underperform their kerosene counterparts in terms of operative empty mass and specific energy consumption. The...

Converting the LNG-Peakshaver to be fit for processing LH2: An LH2 import terminal

To reach the goals of the European Green Deal (CO2 emission reduction of 55% by 2030 and climate neutral by 2050), North-Western Europe has to import sustainable energy as locally produced renewable energy will not be sufficient to meet the total demand. This will be realised by importing green hydrogen from areas with a surplus of renewable...

Mass optimisation of cryogenic fluid systems for long-duration space missions

After the space race to the Moon, Mars has been chosen the new destination to be explored by mankind. Cryogenic propellant is necessary to make space beyond the Moon accessible. Boil-off of cryogenic liquids raises the initial mass of spacecraft by increasing the amount of propellant required to carry-on. Therefore, mitigation of boil-off is key...

Energy transition in aviation: the role of cryogenic fuels

Aviation is the backbone of our modern society. In 2019, around 4.5 billion passengers travelled through the air. However, at the same time, aviation was also responsible for around 5% of anthropogenic causes of global warming. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the aviation sector in the short term is clearly very high, but the long-term...

Development and application of a Multidisciplinary Design Optimisation sizing platform for the conceptual design of hypersonic long-range transport aircraft

With the global increase in passenger traffic and growing popularity of long-haul routes over the Asia Pacific region and Atlantic Ocean, the possibility for hypersonic transport could become an attractive option to reduce flight time over long distance from 16-20 hours down to around 4-5 hours. In this thesis, a Multi-Disciplinary Optimisation...