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Fuel Cell/Battery Hybrid Gives Puma 5hr Duration
By Staff Reporter | June 27, 2007
With a wingspan of 8.5 feet and weight of 12.5 pounds, Puma is a lightweight, hand-launched UAS that provides aerial observation at line-of-sight ranges up to 10 kilometers.
Puma’s standard propulsion system comes equipped with rechargeable batteries with a listed flight time of 2.5 hours. The nearly five-hour duration of the Puma flight using fuel cell battery hybrid power surpassed the longest previous Puma flight achieved by AV using any technology. Looking forward, AV and Protonex expect Puma flight durations to increase further through optimization and continued development of the hybrid system.
AeroVironment (AV) (NASDAQ:AVAV), a leader in unmanned aircraft systems and efficient electric energy systems, today announced that it successfully flew its Puma small unmanned aircraft for nearly five hours while it was powered by an onboard fuel cell battery hybrid energy storage system. This successful demonstration marked the completion of the first task under AV’s contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for the development of advanced propulsion technologies for unmanned aircraft.
The $4.7 million, five-year IDIQ contract calls for several development tasks designed to improve the efficiency and flight duration of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Other tasks under the contract include improvement of electric motor efficiency, integration of solar cells into aircraft wings, and the exploration of hydrogen storage technologies. For this flight demonstration, AV worked with Protonex Technology Corporation (LSE:PTX) to develop the fuel cell battery hybrid energy storage system, which included hydrogen generation technology licensed from Millennium Cell Inc. (NASDAQ:MCEL).
