Matthew Nelson
Boeing's Insitu subsidiary held a flight demonstration for the ScanEagle3 unmanned aerial vehicle in December to evaluate the drone's initial performance traits such as climb rate and aerodynamic characteristics.
The company said Sunday the UAV was equipped with an all-electric, hydrogen-fueled proton exchange membrane fuel cell during the test to power its flight.
The demo was part of test flight preparations for a liquid hydrogen supply tank. The LH2 tank underwent vapor generation, liquid hydrogen fill and pressure tests in February at Washington State University's Hydrogen Properties for Energy Research Laboratory to validate its operational performance.
The tank is manufactured through an additive manufacturing process and designed to propel ScanEagle3 for more than 10 hours.
Andrew Duggan, managing director at Insitu's pacific segment, said fuel cells will potentially allow drones to lower noise signature, increase payload availability and operate for longer periods of time.
Insitu aims to compare the performance of all-electric power systems and internal combustion engines through the test flights.
