The ENABLEH2 project may have suffered some COVID-19-related delays before it ended in January 2023, but it has since wasted no time in using its technological achievements to further develop hydrogen-based air travel. One such development is research produced by Swedish project partner Chalmers University of Technology, which shows that around 97 % of short- and medium-range Nordic flights could be hydrogen-powered by 2045.

The technology making this possible is a new type of compact heat exchanger, a key component of hydrogen aviation developed with support from ENABLEH2. The heat exchanger takes advantage of hydrogen’s low storage temperature to cool engine parts, and then uses waste heat from the exhaust gases to preheat the fuel several hundred degrees before it is injected into the combustion chamber. Regarding the impact on engines using liquid hydrogen, Chalmers University researchers have shown that combining intercooling, micromix combustion and exhaust heat recuperation should improve fuel burn by 8 % and reduce take-off nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 38 %.