China's Hydrogen-Powered Plane Might Be The Answer To The Oil Crisis
A hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine has been used to power an airplane in China, paving the way for more sustainable airline flights.
https://www.bgr.com/2195367/china-hydrogen-plane-oil-crisis-answer/Open linkView original on piefed.social
I'm firmly in support of things that get us away from oil. And while electric works for so many things, I think batteries are going to prove to be too heavy for flight. But with hydrogen - you can use solar and alternative energies to split it from water. So I think there are applications where you want some sort of fuel, and hydrogen is one of those possibilities.
Cryogenic hydrogen on a plane? What could possibly go wrong?
If you're thinking of a comparison to rockets... The circumstances aren't comparable.
This is using an ICE engine, which uses oxygen from the atmosphere. Rockets however don't use the atmosphere for obvious reasons, they carry their own oxidizer.
So when a rocket fails, it has all the oxygen it needs to burn the fuel... Stored with the fuel. Explosions require a relatively narrow range of fuel/oxygen mixture. There's nowhere near enough oxygen in regular air to see detonate cryogenic hydrogen.