Abstract—With huge amount of concern directing towards the use of conventional type of aviation jet fuel which consists of unleaded kerosene (Jet A-1) and Naphta-Kerosene (Jet-B) as the base, which leads to many problems such as global warming, formation of smog and various breathing problems, the idea of using Liquid Hydrogen as an alternative to Jet Fuel seems the best solution. Hydrogen shows the potential to considerably reduce the emissions of aircrafts, annulling the increase in emissions due to the growth of commercial aviation. It is possible to produce large quantities of hydrogen in an environmentally compatible and affordable manner. The only main concern, the use of Hydrogen as aviation fuel faces is the initial infrastructural cost and funding the research for better production of liquid fuel in a much more efficient manner, as the ideas still remains in its premature stages. Work has been done to predict the performance of a hydrogen fueled commercial aircraft, termed as LH2-400, relative to an energy-equivalent conventional Boeing 747-400 aircraft. Safety wise, aircrafts running on commercial kerosene fuel pose a bigger threat in case of an aircraft crash when compared to Hydrogen based aircraft. Through the experiments performed by Boeing, it goes on to state that, LH2-400 aircraft performed better in the beginning of an experimental cruise, while its performance deteriorated towards the end of the cruise, though the overall performance were almost similar. The liquid hydrogen aircraft has the potential to drastically reduce the operating cost of commercial aircrafts.

Index Terms—Aircraft, Liquid hydrogen, Alternate fuel, Economy, Cryogenics, Hydrogen technology

Cite:Shreyas Harsha, "Liquid Hydrogen as Aviation Fuel and Its Relative Performance with Commercial Aircrafts Fuel," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Special Issue, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 73-77, January 2014.