Accelerating climate-neutral hydrogen-powered/electrified aviation

Project results should focus on transformative technologies that address existing technology gaps for an aircraft hydrogen and electrified powertrain of a megawatt class. Project results are expected to contribute to one of the following expected outcomes:

• Deliver transformative aircraft energy storage, conversion and distribution technologies for hydrogen and electrified propulsion that exceed the state-of-the-art.
• Deliver novel heat dissipation, thermal management and recuperation technologies for megawatt class, that exceed the state-of-the-art.
• Deliver advanced simulation tools, validation methodologies and control approaches for an aircraft hydrogen and electrified powertrain of megawatt class.

The proposal is expected to develop further transformative technologies, at low TRL, that have potential to be reviewed and considered for further development and demonstration beyond 2027, towards contributing to aviation climate neutrality by 2050. Electrified aircraft propulsion is the use of electric motors to drive a subset or all of its propulsors. Hydrogen and electrified aircraft propulsion explicitly expands the scope to include hydrogen combustion propulsion.

Hydrogen as energy carrier and batteries as energy storage have the potential to eliminate aviation CO2 emissions as well as reduce non-CO2 ones. Key enabling technologies for aircraft thermal and power management have been identified as showstoppers for their integration.

The topic is open also to fundamental hydrogen research - relevant to aviation – which can be combined to any of the three expected outcomes, such as:

• better understanding of advanced materials’ compatibility and capability in aircraft hydrogen and electrified powertrain applications including effect of water vapour from hydrogen burning;
• computational materials science and innovative characterisation techniques across different length scales.

Beyond the development of transformative systems, the topic may consider the development of innovative control approaches as well as simulation tools and validation methodologies for hydrogen and electrified powertrain of a megawatt class. The development of dedicated test benches (at a TRL range within the scope of this call) should exploit synergies with the CA (cf. note).

The topic aims to exploit synergies with the Clean Aviation partnership, towards developing transformative aircraft hydrogen and electrified powertrain technologies, with an eye towards their review, selection and further development during the second phase of CA. The retained proposals, should, during the implementation phase, regularly exchange information with the Technical Committee and the Governing Board of the Clean Aviation and Clean Hydrogen partnerships respectively (in-line with articles 65 and 80 of the COM(2021) 87).

The topic is not open to hydrogen and electrified architectures, their integration and new aircraft configurations, as those are dealt exclusively in the Clean Aviation partnership (except aircraft types/missions not covered by the CA partnership). Activities should exploit synergies with the Clean Aviation (CA) partnership, with an eye towards their review, selection and further development during the second phase of CA.

To topic addresses primarily to RTOs/Academia/SMEs with guidance and support from aircraft high-tier suppliers and integrators.

Projects should collaborate with the Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking on aspects that require integration of hydrogen and are expected to contribute and participate to the activities of the TRUST database and the hydrogen observatory.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 2-3 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.