Prevailing winds

Photo: Aerocraft.

Frost-bitten at the edge of Hudson’s Bay, 1,700 kilometres north of Winnipeg and about 100 kilometres shy of the Nunavut border, Churchill, Man. is best known as a prairie grain terminus and a hotspot for polar bears. Like a number of other cities in Northern Canada, it’s also the end of the line – a sleepy town where the road north just ends.

To say Canada has an infrastructure problem is understating the scale of the issue. Nearly 70% of Canada’s landmass, or about 7 million square kilometres, is inaccessible by major roads or rail lines. Some areas can be reached seasonally by ice roads or ships, but the rest rely on light air transport, essentially cutting them off from the modern North American economy. This lack of transportation makes the cost of goods in remote areas two-and-a-half to three-times as expensive as in the rest of Canada, and makes getting valuable resources out nearly impossible.

But instead of clearing muskeg to build roads or using innovative techniques to lay track on permafrost, some experts believe Zeppelins can efficiently connect Canada’s northern communities to the 21st century, at a fraction of the cost.

“It’s been a long time in the wilderness… [but] the airship is finally finding itself a market,” said Barry Prentice, a professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba.

The logistics expert and his fellow airship advocates are convinced the technology can be made safe and provide a cleantech solution to Canada’s persistent issues in the Arctic.

Still, it will be a long way back for the “misunderstood” lighter-than-air flyer.

Though it’s been nearly 80 years since the iconic footage of the flaming Hindenburg was first broadcast across the world, the spectacular conflagration has never really faded from public memory.

Today, airships have all but disappeared; nevertheless, there was a time when Zeppelins and other rigid and non-rigid airships were a relatively frequent sight. Through much of the 1930s, the technology was deadlocked with airplanes over which would become the dominant form of air transport.

“It isn’t that the technology didn’t work. The Germans took their Zeppelins from Brazil to Germany back and forth on a scheduled flight, and they never had an accident except for that famous one in New Jersey,” Prentice said.

The public was enamoured with the much faster, sleeker – and, at the time, seemingly less explosive – airplane. The age of airships ended before it truly got off the ground.

Platform for cleantech

Modern airships are built to rigorous safety standards using materials such as ultra-light aluminum and carbon fibre.

While the safety standards have evolved, new airships maintain the Zeppelins’ reputation for delivering weighty payloads. Worldwide Aeros Corp.’s Aeroscraft will be able to lift 66 tons. The rigid-structured airship is currently entering the early stages of production.

John Kiehle, the director of communications at Aeros, based in Montecello, Calif., said the 550-foot airship is ideal for military or heavy cargo operations.

“Whether it’s for shortening the Gantt chart, helping people access stranded resources on the commercial side, or it’s an ecological or humanitarian benefit, I think there really is quite a number of applications, especially up in the Canadian area,” he said.

Likewise, US aerospace and defence company Lockheed Martin is developing a hybrid airship aimed at greatly improving supply chains in remote areas.

“These airships allow access to virtually anywhere, water or land, in a wide range of weather conditions, without forward infrastructure or manpower required,” Lockheed Martin Hybrid Airships program manager, Bob Boyd said.

Airships also burn significantly less fuel than conventional planes, Boyd noted. To get off the ground, airships employ a lighter-than-air gas, which fills the vehicle’s envelopes, or cells. In the case of many traditional airships, engines are only necessary to provide forward thrust. In Lockheed’s Hybrid Airship, gas provides 80% of the lift, while aerodynamic and direct lift account for the other 20%. The Aeroscraft makes itself lighter or heavier than air on demand.

Regardless of the system, an airship’s inherent buoyancy means it requires significantly less fuel than traditional air transport. But it’s the gas used to create a Zeppelin’s trademark lift that has most people feeling nervous. Well, there’s no need. The overwhelming majority of airships designed today – including the Aeroscraft and Lockheed’s Hybrid Airship – use non-reactive helium in place of the more combustible element at the opposite peak of the periodic table. Due to its abundance, and its ability to serve both as a lift agent and a fuel, Prentice thinks hydrogen still has a place. He pointed to the element’s flammability relative to gasoline as evidence that hydrogen can be used safely if handled properly. A 4% concentration of hydrogen in the air is required to catch fire, while only a 1% concentration of gasoline is needed.

“It’s very hard to get a 4% concentration. It helps explain why all those old, leaky airships from 1900 to 1940 didn’t all catch fire… except when they crashed,” he said.

Hydrogen advantage

Perhaps the most significant benefit of using hydrogen in airships would be the opportunity to refuel in the North; conventional aircraft accessing remote communities must carry enough fuel on-board to complete both legs of the trip, in case the pilot has no access to aviation fuel. Hydrogen, however, is relatively easy to synthesize and can easily be produced in remote communities using electrolysis. Airships would then be able to carry less fuel, allowing them to deliver heavier payloads.

Hydrogen also provides more inherent lift than helium – about 6% more – according to Boyd. Still, Lockheed elected to forego hydrogen in its airship design for several key reasons.

“It is a simple fact that hydrogen does combust, and once started it does so rather intensely,” Boyd said.

In addition to the risk to personnel, Boyd said using hydrogen would also carry a significant insurance premium over helium to cover the flammability issue. Meanwhile, he anticipated higher safety standards being built into an airship as well, adding significantly to the overall cost and weight of the ship, something that would counteract hydrogen’s advantages.

“While pure science indicates that hydrogen is a better choice than helium, practicality points the opposite direction,” Boyd said.

Regardless of what companies may be using as a lift agent, what’s important for infrastructure-starved Northern Canada is airships are once again on the production line. The re-imagined technology from the 1930s offers to bring modernity to communities that may never see a road or a rail line.

David Kennedy is an online reporter with CanadianManufacturing.com and a regular contributor to Cleantech Canada.

This article appears in the November/December 2015 issue of PLANT West.