We are pleased to announce the availability of the following draft EUROCAE document prepared by EUROCAE WG-80 Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Systems:
- ED-346: Guidance Document for Liquid Hydrogen storage and distribution on-board aircraft.
WG-80 was established to develop guidelines and collect best practices to support qualification and certification of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Systems in the various intended applications for aerospace vehicles. The Hydrogen Fuel Cell activity is part of the more electrical aircraft strategy. It is looking into hydrogen fuel cell technology airborne use cases and certification objectives. The objective is to look into recommendations, to collect best practices, and to develop guidelines. Performance requirements such as power and reliability are outside the scope of this working group. WG-80 is working as a joint group with SAE AE-7F.
The development of a Guidance Document for the design of a LH2 fuel storage & distribution is the target of the document. This Guidance Document will be structured through a generic system & functions baseline description and key recommendations. This will include some state of the art protection functions from current H2 industries, without covering the full safety details in a dedicated chapter. Recommendations related to extended topics, such as for example unaddressed risks and associated safety, qualification, maintenance and certification recommended approaches, may be added in an up-issue of the document, or be the object of new dedicated transverse documents. Due to the level of knowledge and maturity of disruptive technologies and their use in an aeronautical context, this step by step approach is deemed the most appropriate to progress into high level recommendations first, and then increase the scope with well bounded perimeters. Flightpath 2050 very ambitiously targets 75% CO2 and 90% NOx emissions reductions, relative to year 2000. It is more and more widely recognized that LH2 has the potential to fulfil these goals and completely decarbonise civil aviation in the long term.
You are invited to review the proposed draft on the EUROCAE Workspace and complete the comment form. If you are a non-member of EUROCAE, please register here (and click on “Access only to Open Consultation”). Early replies are encouraged.
End Date: 15/03/2026.