Jadoo Power Powers Fuel Cell UAV

Jadoo Power’s fuel cell system successfully powered the payload and avionics for a Mako unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) recently flight-tested by The Office of Navy Research at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.

The UAV-100 fuel cell system was designed and built by Jadoo Power using commercially available hardware,  a fuel cell stack and packaging components. Kuchera Engineering developed the plan and integrated the system into the Mako. The Mako flew for more than an hour and consumed 8 grams of compressed hydrogen gas.  The UAV-100 fuel cell system provided 63 Watts of power to the avionics and to the nose camera and video transmitter payload during the entire flight.

Sponsored by The Office of Navy Research (ONR) for NAVAIR, the flight test took place on August 13, 2009. The project, under the guidance of Program Manager Dr. Michael Duncan for customer Dr. Chyau Shen, Deputy Director of the Special Surveillance Program NAVAIR 4.5X, brought together Jadoo Power, Pennsylvania State University’s Applied Research Laboratory and Kuchera Engineering, in a collaborative effort to prove airworthiness of a fuel cell based power system.

The Mako UAV was manufactured by L3 Communications/BAI (Battlefield Air Interdiction) Aerosystems for NAVMAR Applied Science Corporation. The Mako weighs 110 pounds and has a wing span of 12’ 11” and has a proven history of reconnaissance and surveillance flight missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Mako UAV is low cost and is highly respected by U.S. Special Operations Command field personnel.

According to the announcement from the ONR, the flight test successfully demonstrated the airworthiness of the UAV-100 to withstand launch, trajectory accelerations, landing, and the effects of the operational environment.  The fuel cell is forward compatible with advanced hydrogen storage technologies that have the potential to increase payload endurance time by up to 300%. The potential of this payload duration improvement has profound implications for increasing the payload capability of Class 2 UAVs.  In addition, this fuel cell technology is scalable to any UAV platform.

Source: Fuel Cell Today