China’s four-rotor hydrogen-powered drone made its first flight

 This drone was jointly developed by Ketaike (Shandong) Special Equipment Technology Co., Ltd. (CTC) and Shenzhen Hydrogen Blue Era Power Technology Co., Ltd. (Hydrogen Blue Era). Unlike ordinary drones, its power system is a hydrogen fuel cell and the key to its long flight time is CTC’s 35-70 MPa drone hydrogen storage cylinder and Hydrogen Blue Era’s 3-58 kW hydrogen fuel cell.

 

According to a person in charge of CTC, one of the core breakthroughs of this maiden flight is the leap in lightweight hydrogen storage cylinders. The 20-l 35 MPa hydrogen storage cylinder carried by the drone weighs less than 6 kg, which is at least 1 kg lighter than similar products on the market. This “slimming down” is not a simple subtraction, but a breakthrough in materials and processes, freeing up valuable payload space for the aircraft, says CTC.

More importantly, hydrogen-powered drones can not only complete difficult manoeuvres such as fixed-point and multi-point cruising, but hydrogen storage cylinders also enable revolutionary endurance performance: 3.5 h of continuous hovering, stable flight control at a maximum distance of 25 km, far surpassing the lithium battery’s endurance of only about 1 h; the characteristic of stable operation in low-temperature environments makes it more advantageous in all-weather operation scenarios such as emergency and inspection.

By building a complete system of hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen storage units, this drone provides solid technical support for the needs of low-altitude flights with long flight time, large load and all-weather operations, CTC concludes.