Hydrogen-Powered Aviation: An Optimization Approach Deciding on Where to Incorporate Hydrogen Into the Air Traffic Sector

The pressure on the air traffic sector to reduce the amount of emitted CO $$_2$$ 2 emissions is continuously increasing. Green hydrogen offers an alternative aircraft fuel that is CO $$_2$$ 2 neutral. However, the production is very energy-intensive, which could lead to different prices at different production sites due to geological differences regarding possibilities to generate renewable energy. On the other hand, the amount of available hydrogen at airports might differ because of the divergent potential for building necessary infrastructure. Furthermore, the number of available hydrogen-powered aircraft will at least in the beginning not be enough to serve all of the European air traffic demand. Hence, there is a need to plan which routes would be operable on a hydrogen basis. For this purpose, we set up a MILP deciding how to use the available hydrogen and hydrogen-powered aircraft best for the European aviation sector. This MILP consists of two parts, one handling the flow of passenger demand through the network via a multicommodity flow problem and one handling the hydrogen refueling, where it is possible that aircraft can be refueled for more than one flight-leg. The solution is a network showing which routes within Europe could be operated by hydrogen-powered aircraft and which ones conventionally.