{"id":32859,"date":"2013-05-12T08:07:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-12T07:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/us-navys-liquid-hydrogen-drone-flies-for-record-48-hours\/32859\/"},"modified":"2013-05-12T08:07:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-12T07:07:00","slug":"us-navys-liquid-hydrogen-drone-flies-for-record-48-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/us-navys-liquid-hydrogen-drone-flies-for-record-48-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"US Navy\u2019s liquid hydrogen drone flies for record 48 hours"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ION<\/a><\/div>\n

A drone developed by the US Navy has broken its own endurance record by staying in the air for just over 48 hours. The ‘Ion Tiger’ used a new cryogenic tank for the liquid hydrogen fuel feeding its fuel cells to achieve the breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Keeping a drone in the air as long as possible is a chief task
\nfor a UAV operator, especially in surveillance. One approach is to
\nuse fuel that packs a lot of energy for its volume, like
\nhydrocarbons; drones like the MQ-9 Reaper can fly for 30 hours
\nwithout landing for refueling.<\/p>\n

But combustion engines that use hydrocarbons to keep an aircraft
\nflying are noisy, hardly ideal for a spy drone. Ion Tiger, a
\nsurveillance drone developed by the Naval Research Laboratory
\n(NRL), the Navy\u2019s research branch, uses an electric engine, which
\nis quieter and has a smaller heat signature compared to traditional
\ndrones.<\/p>\n

A shortcoming with electric motors, however, is that onboard
\nbatteries are much less efficient than chemicals in packing energy,
\nso drones using them can usually only operate for a handful of
\nhours. But NRL\u2019s aircraft uses hydrogen fuel cells to produce
\nelectricity, which improves the endurance trade-off.<\/p>\n

“Liquid hydrogen coupled with fuel-cell technology has the
\npotential to expand the utility of small unmanned systems by
\ngreatly increasing endurance while still affording all the benefits
\nof electric propulsion,”<\/i> NRL principal investigator Dr. Karen
\nSwider-Lyons said in a press release this week.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Ion Tiger set the record for fuel cell UAVs in 2009, when it
\nflew for just over 26 hours using gaseous hydrogen stored in a tank
\nat 5,000 psi. This was replaced in a mid-April test with a tank
\nthat stores cryogenic liquid fuel, which is about three times
\ndenser than the pressured gas used in the 2009 run.<\/p>\n

NRL says their approach has additional logistic benefits, since
\nliquid hydrogen can be produced from water on site rather than
\nhaving to transport solid fuels in bulk.<\/p>\n

Other methods of boosting drone endurance include recharging
\nthem in flight with land-based lasers and installing solar panels.
\nA drone using the latter, the British QinetiQ Zephyr, currently
\nholds the endurance record for drones. In 2010, it flew
\ncontinuously for 14 days over the US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in
\nArizona.<\/p>\n

\"ION<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A drone developed by the US Navy has broken its own endurance record by staying in the air for just over 48 hours. The ‘Ion Tiger’ used a new cryogenic tank for the liquid hydrogen fuel feeding its fuel cells to achieve the breakthrough. Keeping a drone in the air as long as possible is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}