Rolls-Royce and Easyjet are working together on hydrogen-powered flying

If there’s one company that hates your links, it’s EasyJet. Instant coffee costs five euros, but the pinched nerves in your legs are free. At the other end of the spectrum is Rolls-Royce, king of legroom. It is strange that the two cooperate. Opposites attract, so to speak.

We will reveal that this is not about the car branch of Rolls-Royce. The English company also makes aircraft engines and together with EasyJet they are doing research on hydrogen flying. They recently made a small breakthrough, giving them confidence that they can fly on hydrogen between 2030 and 2040.

Completely in hydrogen

Although hydrogen in cars is mostly converted to electricity, Rolls-Royce likes to throw the stuff into the engine to burn. Simply exchanging kerosene and hydrogen is not easy. Together with the English University of Loughborough and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, the companies have investigated how aircraft engines can use hydrogen.

Today the companies report that they have found an airplane engine that uses 100 percent hydrogen. The challenge is that things burn faster and hotter than kerosene. New injectors therefore had to be designed to control ignition better. By fine-tuning the settings, an impulse similar to kerosene has been achieved.

Hydrogen especially for short flights

Rolls-Royce and EasyJet expect hydrogen to play a major role in making short-haul flights more sustainable. Why not for long flights? The right question is: Do you even want to take a long flight with EasyJet? That’s what we thought.