Airbus Developing Hydrogen Storage Technology for Aircrafts

Airbus is developing innovative cryogenic hydrogen storage tanks to support future aircraft fueled by liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen needs to be stored at -253 °C.

In its simplest terms, says Airbus, there are two main technologies that enable an aircraft to fly directly with hydrogen. You can power an engine with hydrogen combustion through modified gas turbine engines, and you can use hydrogen fuel cells to create electrical power. And you can deploy a hybrid approach that uses a mixture of both technologies.

Regardless of these options there is a constant at work: liquid hydrogen needs to be stored at -253°C, and kept at that temperature consistently throughout the whole flight, even when the tanks are depleted.