£9.5M Project to Develop Hydrogen Jet Engines for Net-Zero Aviation

A £9.5M EPSRC grant will support an ambitious project aiming to transform aviation by achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Leading researchers from the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, Loughborough University, and King’s College London gathered at the Oxford Thermofluids Institute on 5 June to officially launch the project.

The programme is centred on developing hydrogen-powered jet engines, with hydrogen viewed as the key to sustainable aviation, as it emits only water when burned and produces no carbon emissions.

However, hydrogen combustion introduces significant challenges. The fuel delivered to the combustor is colder and more compressible than current aviation fuel. Due to hydrogen’s exceptional properties, such as very fast flame speed and very low density, completely new burner architectures are necessary. With hydrogen often causing increased propensity to damaging thermoacoustic instability, simulation tools for predicting and mitigating this are needed.

Imperial will be leading workpackage 2, on Combustion dynamics in hydrogen-fuelled jet engines. The workpackage aims to develop hydrogen-capable simulation tools for combustion dynamics, investigate the effect of different burner architectures, advance acoustic modelling of hydrogen combustors and investigate new acoustic dampers and cooling concepts.

It will involve close collaboration with Loughborough University who are performing complementary combustor experiments, the University of Oxford who are performing fuel line experiments and simulations and will further Imperial’s combustion simulation links with Stanford University.

Professor Aimee Morgans said: "Combining our expertise across multiple institutions allows us to tackle complex combustion dynamics and achieve low emissions without sacrificing engine performance."