2 hours flight times with hydrogen power cells?

[lucadeceres]

What the hell... is this a Matrice with an hydrogen cell?

Hydrogen fuel cells give drones 'several hours' of flight time

 

[ADSSER]

Yes, it looks like the prototype mentioned in the article.

 

[huppe]

I think you better start to save money.

 

[dpetroni1]

Here's a bit more info:
Hydrogen fuel cells promise to keep drones flying for hours

 

[The Editor]

There is a lot of exciting battery/power technology around the corner.
There is a company that has developed a pack made up of cells that after 1,000 charge/discharge cycles still retains 90% of original capacity.
That's not the cool part though, what's really exciting is that upon charge it acts like a super capacitor and thus takes a huge charge very quickly - we are talking about the equivalent of charging a TB48 in around 30 seconds!!
Then on discharge it acts like a normal lithium polymer pack and will deliver the goods!

 

[JoeyJoe]

There is a lot of exciting battery/power technology around the corner.
There is a company that has developed a pack made up of cells that after 1,000 charge/discharge cycles still retains 90% of original capacity.
That's not the cool part though, what's really exciting is that upon charge it acts like a super capacitor and thus takes a huge charge very quickly - we are talking about the equivalent of charging a TB48 in around 30 seconds!!
Then on discharge it acts like a normal lithium polymer pack and will deliver the goods!

We have been hearing of these "supercapacitor" style, quick charge batteries for years now.
I'll believe it when I see it on a store shelf or for sale on Amazon.

 

[lucadeceres]

I think you better start to save money.

Yeah... when this will be on the market I will switch to Matrice in a while

 

[jon b]

There is a lot of exciting battery/power technology around the corner.
There is a company that has developed a pack made up of cells that after 1,000 charge/discharge cycles still retains 90% of original capacity.
That's not the cool part though, what's really exciting is that upon charge it acts like a super capacitor and thus takes a huge charge very quickly - we are talking about the equivalent of charging a TB48 in around 30 seconds!!
Then on discharge it acts like a normal lithium polymer pack and will deliver the goods!

In China, they are starting to build a prototype trolly system powered by SC technology. Trolly can make it from station to station, then as the passengers load and unload, the whole system charges in 40 seconds ready for the next leg. It's cool as the only high tech exists at the stations, the streets need nothing special to be buried or suspended to power the cars.

 

[southerndoug]

What the hell... is this a Matrice with an hydrogen cell?

Hydrogen fuel cells give drones 'several hours' of flight time

Good find! I've been looking at a couple of companies working on this technology:

Join us on EnergyOR Technologies inc.

and

ABOUT US | HORIZON ENERGY SYSTEMS

both doing cool things like the link to the company you posted. I got in touch with the Singapore guys, and they will have a product for sale early next year (they estimate), starting price US$40K.... ouch. But this sort of thing will only get cheaper, as we know. Others to watch are Tesla:

'Tesla Drone' Poised to Revolutionize Unmanned Filmmaking | The Creators Project

... which looks pretty.... well, pretty!

But my favourite for most practical, affordable, ready to go (almost) and with the possibility of payload as well, are these guys:

Home - yeair!

"only" one hour endurance, but practical, and for the price of one AC with a H2 fuel cell, you could have a fleet of them Yeairs....

 

[southerndoug]

... and just on that: A big company like DJI MUST be exploring this (latest fuel cell tech) too. They've teamed up with FLIR, why not one of these guys?

 

[sirnikolas]

Amazeballs! Can't wait to see what they show at CES!

 

[RaptorMan]

Not a lot of info in the article, but I have my doubts! Fuel cells don't tend to output a lot of power and a bird like the I1 eats about 2KW. A fuel cell capable of putting out that amount of power would be pretty big and heavy as best I can tell. Also, if this is designed to REPLACE the battery pack it had better be able to handle transient power loads of more like 5KW and likely higher. If this is in ADDITION to a battery pack then we're talking about higher total weight and, well, this isn't adding up...


Brian

 

[John Alan]

Lets think this thru... throw some numbers at this...
TB48 has a stated capacity of 5700 mAH... or 5.7 amp hours
Round down to 5 amp hours for easy math... use 25 volts as average during a power cycle...
(25*5=125)...So 125 watt hours of power (battery says 129.96 Wh... close enough)
BUT... we drain one of these in well under an hour... lets use 15 mins or 1/4 of an hour...
Invert and multiple (4/1* 5=20)... drawing 20 amps for 15 mins drains a 5 AH battery... sounds about right...
Now... if a fuel cell could push 20 amps at 25 volts or 500 watts out... and weigh the same or less then a TB48...
Maybe add a small supercap based battery to handle brief needs for more amps... like when climbing hard...
Hmmmm... seems doable... but at what price for the hardware...

 

[Kilrah]

In China, they are starting to build a prototype trolly system powered by SC technology. Trolly can make it from station to station, then as the passengers load and unload, the whole system charges in 40 seconds ready for the next leg. It's cool as the only high tech exists at the stations, the streets need nothing special to be buried or suspended to power the cars.

Nothing new, that technology's been around for ages, I was working on exactly that kind of design 15 years ago and it was basically already mature back then. Got dumped because too expensive and complicated, while not really solving any problem besides looking and sounding cool (which means someone's bound to end up using it for that reason one day).

The fuel cell announcement just sounds like nothing but a basic "look at me" statement. Typical PR stunt that suggests it can solve all the problems of a trendy application everybody's currently talking about to attract interest, but if you scratched the surface you'd get a "hmm well yeah we totally think it can be done, we haven't actually done any reasearch on whether it's actually realistic yet but you can be sure we will if you give us $millions!"

Maybe add a small supercap based battery to handle brief needs for more amps... like when climbing hard...
Hmmmm... seems doable...

Supercaps have VERY low energy density, significantly lower than any battery type. Makes absolutely no sense to use some on an aircraft.

 

[The Editor]

Still nowhere near the flight time of the aircraft in my signature so I'm just not impressed.