China's First Manned Fuel Cell Aircraft Successfully Completes Maiden Flight

December 27, 2016, the China's first manned fuel cell aircraft powered by 20kW proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) successfully completed its maiden flight in Northeast of China. The 20kW PEMFC served as power supply was developed by proton exchange membrane fuel cell research team in DICP. The successfully flight means a breakthrough progress in the domestic aviation fuel cell technology. It also makes China the third country having such technology after the United States and Germany.

The research team began to develop the 20kW level H₂-PEMFC technology for aerostatic application since 2014. The key technical issues such as efficient water management, heat management, high security and high reliability have been broken in the past two years of research. The power system completed ground joint test, environmental adaptability test and high speed test and so on. In this flight, the performance, safety, reliability and environmental adaptability of fuel cell system can all reach the technical requirements.

Previously, the research team has developed 10kW level type-I, type-II and type-III aviation PEMFC power system, which fills the gap in this field of technology. Among them, type I system was applied in China's first fuel cell powered airship, "Zhiyuan No. 1" in November 2009; type II system was used in China's first fuel cell unmanned aerial vehicles, "Thunderbird" in July 2012; type III system was served as tail driving force of the airship, which completes the high altitude environmental adaptability test. This manned flight further confirms that the fuel cell power supply system not only shows good safety and reliability, but also demonstrates excellent storage, start up and output performance at -20^oC.

China's First Manned Fuel Cell Aircraft(Imaged by LIU Da and ZHOU Li)

Fuel cell is efficient and environmentally friendly power generation equipment and becomes an important development direction of new energy technology. It can be widely used in power supply, distributed power station, mobile power and so on. The aircraft powered by fuel cell becomes an international research topic due to the advantages of low noise, zero pollution and long battery life. (Text by ZHOU Li / Imaged by LIU Da and ZHOU Li)