Airbus has unveiled plans to produce the world’s first zero-emission commercial planes to run on hydrogen by 2035.

The European aerospace company on Monday released three different aircraft concepts, each exploring a different approach to achieving zero-emission flight but all relying on hydrogen as a primary power source.

"This is a historic moment for the commercial aviation sector as a whole and we intend to play a leading role in the most important transition this industry has ever seen," Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said in a statement.

‘Exciting options’
The first concept could carry between 120 and 200 passengers across some 2,000 nautical miles. The turbofan design would be powered by a modified gas-turbine engine running on hydrogen, rather than jet fuel, through combustion.

The second concept, a turboprop design, would carry up to 100 passengers over 1,000 nautical miles, while the third one, a "blended-wing body" design, would welcome up to 200 passengers for a 2,000 nautical miles trip.

"Hydrogen has a different volumetric energy density than jet fuel so we have to study other storage options and aircraft architectures than existing ones" Jean-Brice Dumont, Airbus EVP Engineering, said.

"This means the visual appearance of our future zero-emission aircraft will change. These three configurations provide us with some exciting options for further exploration," he went on

Airbus engineers are to start working on hydrogen demonstrator programmes over the coming months to test hydrogen fuel cell and hydrogen combustion technologies with the aim to have a full-scale aircraft prototype ready by the late 2020s.

"As recently as five years ago, hydrogen propulsion wasn’t even on our radar as a viable emission-reduction technology pathway, Glenn Llewellyn, Airbus VP, Zero-Emission Aircraft, noted.

"But convincing data from other transport industries quickly changed all that. Today, we’re excited by the incredible potential hydrogen offers aviation in terms of disruptive emissions reduction," he added.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.euronews.com