Rolls-Royce and Easyjet enter into a collaboration (but slightly different than you think)

Finally legroom at EasyJet? No, don't be silly

If there's one company that hates your limbs, it's EasyJet. An instant coffee costs five euros, but pinched veins in your legs are free. At the other end of the spectrum is Rolls-Royce, the king of legroom. It's strange that those two are collaborating. Opposites attract, so to speak. We will reveal that this is not about Rolls-Royce's car branch. The English company also develops aircraft engines and together with EasyJet they conduct research into flying on hydrogen. They recently made a small breakthrough, giving them confidence that they can fly on hydrogen between 2030 and 2040.

Completely on hydrogen

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

Today the companies report that they have gotten an aircraft engine running on 100 percent hydrogen. The challenge is that the stuff burns faster and hotter than kerosene. New injectors therefore had to be developed to better control ignition. By fine-tuning the settings, a thrust equal to kerosene has been achieved.

Hydrogen mainly for short flights

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

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