Hydrogen fuel cell powered Hyfish jet takes flight

It looks like some folks in Bern, Switzerland may have gotten a bit of a rude wake up call recently, when the unmanned, hydrogen fuel cell powered Hyfish jet made its high-pitched debut earlier this month -- which, according to the group of developers behind it, makes it the "world's first" jet of this sort. They don't seem to have been content with simply getting the jet off the ground, however, with the Hyfish reportedly pushing itself to a top speed of 200km per hour and even performing a few aerial acrobatics, which you can thankfully check out in the video after the break. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have any plans for a manned version anytime soon, although Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies (who helped out with the Hyfish) does see the technology winding up in other UAVs, which they say would be capable of 15 to 30 hour flight times.

[kadajawi @ Apr 19th 2007 12:08PM]

What a cool sound. Makes me thing of, uh, Star Wars I think.

[Raistlin Majere @ Apr 19th 2007 12:18PM]

Terminators - we're Soooo screwed.

[Mike @ Apr 19th 2007 12:58PM]

More like the sound of the the flying sub in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

[darkstar @ Apr 19th 2007 12:09PM]

how much??
i want one!
i have no idea what i would do with it though.

[justin @ Apr 19th 2007 12:32PM]

very cool, big enough for a chipmunk to pilot

http://www.wiiuser.org

[JL @ Apr 19th 2007 12:36PM]

Jet engines are combustion engines, and not powered by electricity. Are they talking about spinning the turbines using electricity from the fuel cell, or is it just a ducted fan? Or am I just missing something?

[KerryB @ Apr 19th 2007 12:40PM]

Pretty rad... and I love the decidedly low tech lauch technology.

THROW IT! HARDER!

[Jesse S @ Apr 19th 2007 12:43PM]

Honestly...So what? And @ JL, yeah, this doesn't make any sense...

[Ivo @ Apr 19th 2007 12:56PM]

Everything hydrogen for a brave new world!

http://www.gadgetfriends.net/?q=hydrogen

[glucoseboy @ Apr 19th 2007 1:02PM]

From the youtube video, it sounds like a standard electric ducted-fan unit. So it's a hydrogen fuel-cell that's powering the electric motor. The website for the fuel cell, www.horizonfuelcell.com shows various "educational" sized units that may be powering the hyfish.

I'm curious to see the weight/power specs on the unit they're using to power the plane.

[pyro @ Apr 19th 2007 8:14PM]

Ya, I was wondering about the electric fan used on it since normal jets use combustion and hydrogen fuel cell doesn't. Wouldn't this technically be a propellor driven plane rather then a jet?

[Greg @ Apr 19th 2007 1:02PM]

Based on the link, Horizon is Singapore-based, so I imagine the "jet" part is just an error in English, someone translating "airplane" as "jet".

[KC @ Apr 19th 2007 1:44PM]

@Greg, the link on "contact us" shows the address to be in Shanghai, China. Singapore isn't in China.

http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/contact_us.htm

[Andrew @ Apr 19th 2007 1:07PM]

The most likely situation is that the fuel cell is just running all the on-board electronics. This is the sort of thing that's being looked at by industry and academics right now.

Fuel cells don't provide propulsion on their own, and using fuel cell-generated electricity to run a turine would just be an unnecessary efficiency loss.

[Greg @ Apr 19th 2007 1:12PM]

My guess goes with glucoseboy, and against Andrew. Weight and power specs are in the linked article, and 1kW is a lot for running on-board electronics.

[glucoseboy @ Apr 19th 2007 1:17PM]

Just to clarify, I believe the fuel cell is powering the jet's propulsion system:

It's a simple ducted fan unit, r/c hobbyists use this thing all the time.

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXHHP7&P=7

These guys could have easily just made a model where the electric motor swings a conventional prop (more efficient but I guess it wouldn't look as cool)

Regarding UAV applications, howabout this: You have a UAV that has solar cells that power the craft in the day and charge the fuel cell so it can run at night. But again, as was mentioned earlier, it's not very efficient way to convert and store energy. You'd probably get better results charging a "conventional" battery with your solar cells for night flights.

[El Cid @ Apr 19th 2007 1:35PM]

I'm going to guess that it's not really a 'jet', it's probably using the electrical output to power a motorized internal propeller, aka "ducted fan", which looks like a jet because the propellers are inside.

[meike @ Apr 19th 2007 1:38PM]

this is very impressive! is that hole in the front the intake for the jet engine?

[Lee Gibson @ Apr 19th 2007 1:47PM]

Reading the article, it seems to me that their pet environmentalists haven't realized that water vapor is a greenhouse gas, too.

[Greg @ Apr 19th 2007 1:57PM]

@KC, fair enough, but the article refers to "Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies Pte Ltd of Singapore". Search me.

[Timothy Frierson @ Apr 19th 2007 2:54PM]

I was thinking of the "flying sub" too, and I was just thinking what the possiblities might be if they could vent or store H2 as an afterburner...

[Geoff @ Apr 19th 2007 3:03PM]

So how long before passenger airline engines are replaced with more environment friendly ones? I find it hard to believe that there has been no advances in basic engine design in decades. You'd think by now someone could have come up with something. I'll stop now before I get into conspiracy theories

[Michael Vernor @ Apr 19th 2007 4:09PM]

Don't forget that weight and cost are huge considerations before this tech goes anywhere.

[lear @ Apr 20th 2007 2:17AM]

More details can be found on the aircraft Designers website, as opposed to the manufacturer of the fuel-cell. The designers clearly state they want to do more then just UAV...

"This technology can be used for a wide range of applications, from UAV to high performance sports planes to business jets that can accommodate up to 20 passengers."

http://www.smartfish.ch

If you click on the Video link you can watch the prototype flight from 2003 of the non-hydrogen powered scale model.

The newer video can be found in the news section.

[der @ May 2nd 2007 11:20AM]

the sound reminds me of all those older alien movies, like war of the worlds, and the one with leslie neilson and robby the robot.