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H2Fly HY4 electric demonstrator aircraft flying above Maribor, Slovenia. Photo Credit: H2Fly H2Fly (Stuttgart, Germany), a wholly owned subsidiary of Joby Aviation (Santa Cruz, Calif., U.S.) and developer of hydrogen-electric powertrain systems for aircraft, has announced the successful completion of piloted flight of an electric aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen (LH2). CW was told that while the cryogenic hydrogen storage vessels are not composite (they are developed by Air Liquide Advanced Technologies, Sassenage, France), the HY4 demonstrator aircraft is, mainly using CFRP. H2Fly was founded by engineers from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the University of Ulm, and acquired by Joby in 2021. The company completed a series of piloted flights with the HY4, including one that lasted more than three hours, fitted with a hydrogen-electric fuel cell propulsion system and LH2 that powered it for the entire flight. The flights demonstrate the viability of using cryogenically stored LH2 instead of gaseous hydrogen, which enables significantly lower tank weights and volume, leading to longer range. Results indicate that using liquid hydrogen will double the maximum range of the HY4 aircraft from 750 kilometers to 1,500 kilometers, marking a critical step towards the delivery of emissions-free, medium- and long-haul commercial flights. The successful flights are the culmination of Project HEAVEN, a European government-supported consortium assembled to demonstrate the feasibility of using LH2 in aircraft. The consortium is led by H2Fly and includes the partners Air Liquide, Pipistrel Vertical Solutions, the DLR, Ekpo Fuel Cell Technologies and Fundación Ayesa. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMVD) and the University of Ulm. Following this test flight milestone, H2Fly will increasingly focus on its path to commercialization. In June, H2Fly announced the development of its new fuel cell systems, which will be capable of providing their full power range at altitudes high enough to enable commercial hydrogen-electric aircraft, demonstrating real-world commercial aircraft applications. In 2024, H2Fly will open its Hydrogen Aviation Center at Stuttgart Airport, co-funded by the Ministry of Transport Baden Württemberg. The Center will become a focal point for the future of Europe’s aviation industry and its hydrogen economy, providing fuel cell aircraft integration facilities and LH2 infrastructure. For related information read about: The NCC’s milestone in composite cryogenic hydrogen tanks. ZeroAvia and Absolut Hydrogen’s LH2 refueling infrastructure.

Using a new dataset, scientists analyzed the coordinates and surface of 183 million buildings in nearly 6,000 cities across all 52 countries in Africa. With their model, they quantify the shape of cities. Thus, they show that if a city's population doubles, the energy demand associated with commuting triples. These results clearly show how important it will be to plan fast-growing cities in a sustainable way. Using a new dataset, Rafael Prieto-Curiel of the Complexity Science Hub and colleagues analyzed the coordinates and surface of 183 million buildings in nearly 6,000 cities across all 52 countries in Africa. With their model, they quantify the shape of cities. Thus, they show that if a city's population doubles, the energy demand associated with commuting triples. These results clearly show how important it will be to plan fast-growing cities in a sustainable way. "Our model allows us to estimate African cities' transport requirements and energy needs with a never before seen accuracy," Prieto-Curiel, researcher at the Complexity Science Hub, says. Together with Jorge E. Patino from Universidad EAFIT and Brilé Anderson from OECD, he studied a recently published dataset from Google AI. With this unprecedented data the researchers measured the mean distance between buildings in 6.000 African cities and used it as a proxy for energy demand related to mobility. Africa is an exceptional place for this research. By comparison, there are less than 400 metropolitan areas in the US. In addition, African cities will grow faster than ever before. "Based on the distance between buildings, we calculated the expected distance and time to travel for every single person within a city," Prieto-Curiel explains. Their result: double the population means triple the energy costs. After all, more people are traveling longer distances. Large Cities Tend to Be Round, Small Cities Sausage-Shaped This tripling effect is due in part to urban morphology and how cities grow. "Constructing bigger buildings (area and height) near the city center reduces the commuting distance, as well as the energy consumption of the city and helps preserve green spaces," Prieto-Curiel explains one of their findings. The team also learned that big cities tend to be shaped differently than smaller cities. As they grow, larger cities tend to become slightly rounder and more compact. Smaller cities tend to have more of a sausage shape. Sausage Shape Increases Pollution Imagine two cities that both have the same number of inhabitants. If one is round and compact, then objects and people are relatively close to each other. If the other one is shaped like a sausage, then some people must spend more time and energy to get from one side to the other. The problem with this is not only time, but also pollution. So a sausage-like city causes more pollution because of its shape. "Frequently, cities grow on the periphery as more housing is built in areas where the city is growing. This type of urban growth increases commuting distances and makes it more difficult to provide enough services for the new houses, such as sewage and electricity," Prieto-Curiel explains. A Look Into the Future of Africa In many parts of the world extensive urbanization has already taken place. In Africa, the next three decades will bring profound changes, forecasts indicate. Currently, cities like Cairo, Lagos, Luanda, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Addis Ababa are home to millions of people, and they are expected to increase their size considerably within the next decades. "By 2050, Africa will have an additional 950 million people living in cities, up from 574 million people in 2015," Prieto-Curiel states. More buildings -- apartments, schools, hospitals, etc. -- will have to be constructed. Where and how these new buildings are built matters greatly because today's decisions will be with us for decades to come. And the resulting morphology of cities impacts permanently on a city's energy needs. "We should plan especially those cities that will grow extremely fast in the next twenty years with special consideration. They must be extremely resilient to many challenges," Prieto-Curiel emphasizes. Combining Enormous Amounts of Data To conduct this study, the research team brought together massive amounts of data: A new dataset of Google AI provided coordinates of every single building in Africa's cities. In combination with data from Africapolis, the German Aerospace Center and OpenStreetMap the researchers measured the shape of nearly 6000 cities across Africa. They then constructed a set of indicators. Indicators like the number of buildings, their constructed surface, the amount of space used by the city center, how elongated or compact a city is -- to name just a few. These indicators make all cities comparable for the first time -- large and small. "Until now, we only had satellite images, but it was very difficult to manipulate these photos. Especially in smaller cities, it's not so easy to identify what a building is," Prieto-Curiel explains. Google AI's new open access data set has changed that. Using a machine learning process, it can define the vertices of each building as coordinates. Like a city made of Lego bricks. New Data, New Chances Much of the collective knowledge of urban forms in African cities and future energy needs was based on samples of only a few cities. Advancements like the data used for this study and its findings are critical to the future of cities. Only in this way can we put urbanization on a path of resilience and sustainability in the coming decades. "Our results show that future energy needs for transport could be incredibly cumbersome if trends continue," Prieto-Curiel states. Designing compact, dense, and better-connected urban forms will help cities be more sustainable and liveable. Particularly in the case of African cities that will experience rapid growth within the next few decades.

INVENT CEO Henning Wichmann and CTO Carsten Schöppinger. All Photo Credit: INVENT GmbH Founded in 1996, aerospace SME Innovative Verbundwerkstoffe, Realization & Vermarktung neuer Technologien, or INVENT GmbH (Braunschweig, Germany), is celebrating 25 years in the industry. As of today, the company employs around 90 individuals and expects to grow its growth trajectory. Connected and rooted in the Braunschweig research region, INVENT GmbH operates across European borders and the Asian market. “We have been working in composite lightweight design for a quarter of a century, a topic that originally played a major role primarily in aerospace, but now increasingly in other high-tech areas as well,” explains Henning Wichmann, CEO, INVENT. “This is because weight savings bring economic advantages in aerospace, but also in other industries. The lighter a satellite or an aircraft is, the less fuel and energy is needed. At the same time, the materials in these industries must be extremely resilient. Materials must fulfill very high thermal, mechanical, electrical and radiation-protection requirements.” Founded in Braunschweig, Germany, the company says its first headquarters was a two-story, 160-square-meter residential builder, three partners and two employees. “We were diagonally opposite the tax office, which is not nice as an entrepreneur. And my office was in the original bedroom of the house,” Wichmann recalls. Initial circumstances did not keep Wichmann from working hard: Twenty-five years later, the small think tank that started out as a spin-off of the Institute of Lightweight Design and Adaptronics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR, Braunschweig, Germany), with 25,000 Deutsche Mark (approx. $15,000 USD) in start-up capital, has become a medium-sized company with around 90 employees that is firmly integrated in international aerospace projects. “I would never have dared to dream of this development in 1996, but I am pleased and also a little proud of what we have achieved in the last quarter of a century,” says Wichmann. It was Wichmann and current CTO, Carsten Schöppinger, that built INVENT from the ground up. Both individuals met in the mid-1990s as graduate engineers at the University of Applied Sciences in Wolfenbüttel. There, they made the acquaintance of Prof. Holger Hanselka. Soon after that, they met the other founders and first partners of INVENT at DLR: Prof. Elmar Breitbach and Prof. Axel Herrmann. The professors first looked for student assistants and then, in 1996, two managing directors with commercial and technical experience for their planned DLR spin-off. “We were, and still are, closely connected with the DLR through cooperation agreements. But the goal of INVENT then, as now, was to create an outlet into the market for lightweight construction and also to mass-produce products. This is not possible on a larger scale in a research center that focuses on research and teaching,” says Wichmann. Still at the helm of INVENT, he and Schöppinger are also the main shareholders of the Braunschweig SME; 30% of the company belongs to an employee GbR, as well as other, smaller shareholders. INVENT headquarters in Braunschweig, Germany. “We received our first series order from the then aircraft manufacturer Dornier in 1997. We quickly realized that we needed our own production facility in the medium term, and we started with the corresponding plans in 2000. In 2002, we moved to our first location in the Braunschweig industrial area,” Schöppinger reports. In 2006, the company applied for a contract with the aviation company Airbus (Toulouse, France) with success. INVENT GmbH says it manufactured— and still manufactures — structures for the A380, as well as the A320 and A330. “In 2008, we were able to manufacture and deliver the products for Airbus, but not to rework them, not to paint them, not to test them. That’s why we have successively expanded the value chain in-house and can now offer our customers much more from a single source with know-how and extensive plant technology from the initial idea to series production,” adds Wichmann. The first major space projects followed in 2010. INVENT highlights a recent contract for the production of lightweight components for four earth observation satellites from the European Copernicus program. “That was a huge success for us and shows that we are on the right track with our commitment and know-how, and that we have built up and expanded a lot of experience and reliability over the past 10 years, not only in our traditional field of aeronautics, but also in space travel,” says Wichmann. Today, INVENT GmbH is based on three business areas, including aviation, space travel and other sectors such as rail, automotive or wind energy. The company also maintains a research and development (R&D) unit that works for all areas, for example, also acquires projects from public tenders throughout Germany or Europe. “All this time, we were not so much concerned with maximum profits, but rather with moderate and stable growth,” says Wichmann. He says his vision for the next few years as well includes healthy growth, and the ability and the means to successfully place new products (e.g., radiators or CFRP tanks) on the market. This means continuing to do their homework and deal with customers and suppliers properly. “A major challenge is the digitalization of the company’s processes, the implementation of which is in full swing. In addition, following the recent move within the Braunschweig industrial estate two years ago, at least one more building is to be constructed in the immediate vicinity with an expansion of production and office space; the market has become bigger. INVENT would also like to expand contacts in the growing space-travel start-up scene,” concludes Wichmann. “Elon Musk is showing us the way in the U.S. If we succeed in establishing innovative products in new and existing markets, we will have 20 to 30 more employees in ten years.”