EU project GENESIS aims to electrify air traffic

In road traffic, electromobility is becoming increasingly popular. In aviation, on the other hand, kerosene is still the common fossil fuel. Burning kerosene produces not only CO₂ but also water steam, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and soot - all substances that have a negative impact on the climate. In order to make air traffic more environmentally friendly and also quieter, the European Commission is promoting and coordinating various research projects together with the European aviation industry within the framework of the Clean Sky 1 + 2 programmes. One of these is GENESIS, a project that examines the environmental impact of electric and hybrid aircrafts. Priscilla Caliandro and Bruno Lemoine from BFH's Energy Storage Research Centre are also working on the project, which is led by the Technical University of Denmark. They are particularly concerned with research into battery and fuel cell technologies. In doing so, they analyse various battery systems to find out which ones meet the requirements for electric aviation. In addition, the researchers are making forecasts for the ecological footprint of the battery manufacturing process.

Hybrid drives have great potential

The GENESIS project will run until late summer 2023, and Bruno Lemoine was able to present some results of the BFH's research work at the International Conference on Electrical Systems for Aircraft, Railway, Ship Propulsion and Road Vehicles (ESARS) in Venice at the end of March. In a scientific paper, the BFH researchers describe that the relatively low energy density of storage systems is one of the major challenges for the desired conversion from fossil fuels to electric drives. Hybrid drives that combine different technologies for energy storage could be a solution here. They have the potential to improve the performance, reliability, robustness and sustainability of the overall system. To find out which system is the most promising, the researchers created a so-called hybridisation algorithm. This study allowed to improve the performance of a hybrid propulsion system for a 50-seat passenger aircraft by optimizing the energy storage system composed of Solid-state batteries and solid oxide fuel cells.