ZeroAvia, a company developing zero-emission solutions for commercial aviation, today announced signing a collaboration agreement with Shell, Rotterdam The Hague Airport and Rotterdam the Hague Innovation Airport. The parties will develop a concept of operations for hydrogen in airports and demonstration flights to European destinations by the end of 2024, gearing up for commercial passenger flights by 2025 the company reports.
Following up on the cooperation commitment announced last year to launch the first hydrogen-electric commercial flight, ZeroAvia say this specific collaboration will focus on serving the first hydrogen flight from Rotterdam, including operation at the airport, developing on-the-ground infrastructure and operations to satisfactorily pilot distribution, storage, and dispensing of hydrogen for aviation, leading towards decarbonizing the whole airport ecosystem.
According to a press release “Ultimately, the project targets supporting aircraft operations using gaseous hydrogen to fuel ZeroAvia’s hydrogen-electric, zero-emission ZA600 engines. For these specific demonstration flights the parties aim to establish routes to airports in Europe within 250 nautical mile radius of Rotterdam. Last month, ZeroAvia demonstrated a first flight of a 19-seat aircraft powered by its prototype ZA600 engine.
“ZeroAvia has previously partnered with Shell for the provision of low carbon-intensity hydrogen to power some of its testing and early commercial operations in California. The multinational energy company also invested in ZeroAvia last year.
“ZeroAvia’s testing of the ZA600 powertrain in flight is part of HyFlyer II, an R&D project supported in part by the UK Government’s ATI programme. The project has also seen the further development of ZeroAvia’s Hydrogen Airport Refuelling Ecosystem (HARE) demonstrator alongside project partner EMEC, and separately ZeroAvia has developed a hydrogen refuelling pipeline at Cotswold Airport.”
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(Image: ZeroAvia)