A £3.37 million, 16-month project will convert airport ground vehicles—tow tugs and handling equipment—to run on hydrogen, with refuelling stations installed at Teesside International Airport and RAF-Leeming. Aviation ground operations currently rely on diesel vehicles, producing emissions that airports must eliminate to meet net-zero targets. No standardised, certified approach exists for converting airside fleets to hydrogen, and safety approvals from the Civil Aviation Authority and RAF are rare. This project builds on a successful Phase 1 that secured those approvals for a prototype hydrogen drivetrain. If successful, the project will productionise ULEMCo’s hydrogen drivetrain for medium and larger vehicles (50 kW and 110 kW engines), creating a fleet conversion centre in the Teesside region. The hydrogen refuelling stations will also serve public vehicles and other hydrogen projects, establishing an “Airport-Hub Model” that could be replicated at civil and defence airports across the UK. Newcastle University will measure actual emissions reductions, refuelling behaviour, and user acceptance, providing hard data for future rollout. The RAF’s involvement through Project ViTAL adds military assessment of hydrogen technologies for defence operations.
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This £3.37M, 16month project, led by ULEMCo with Teesside International Airport (TIAL), Motive Fuels, Newcastle University, and additional demonstration at RAF-Leeming, will deliver capability and learning for the application of hydrogen to decarbonise Airport operations. It builds upon the successful Phase-1 programme and based on the learning and awareness-raising of that initiative, targets upcycling airside specialist-vehicles and handling-equipment to zero-emission, to support the aviation sector's net-zero requirements. Alongside this will be the installation of a hydrogen refuelling stations (HRS) located at RAF-Leeming and at Teesside International Airport (the latter as part of the related Teesside International Airport Refuelling Hub Project). These will be used to build understanding of the future role for hydrogen use within the ‘Airport-Hub Model’, at TIAL and RAF-Leeming. It supports ULEMCo's goal to productionise their highly-novel, Phase-1 prototype HYICE-E drivetrain for airside applications, by extending the fleet of Medium Aircraft Tow-Tugs at both TIAL and RAF-L and applying the same and larger formats (50KW and 110KW H2ICE engines) to a range of airside vehicles, with the aim of creating a fleetwide conversion centre in the Teesside Region. It will inform TIAL's objective of reaching net-zero and consolidate their position at the heart of the THTH, building on the significant achievement in Phase-1 of gaining approval from both the Civil-Aviation-Authority and the RAF for use of hydrogen vehicles, airside. The installation of the correctly sized Hydrogen Refuelling Stations will not only allow refuelling of vehicles funded in this project, but will enable refuelling of publicly owned vehicles, ULEMCo’s hydrogen dual-fuel H2ICED® vehicles developed outside this project, and vehicles deployed in other Teesside-hub projects. Demonstration of the Hydrogen-Airport-Hub model will ultimately allow for application airside/roadside, and aircraft refuelling within civil/defence operations UK wide. Newcastle University's Future Mobility Group will capture and analyse the data generated, assessing the extent of tailpipe emissions reduction within the airport models across the country, evaluating the use of the HRS, measuring use behaviour and acceptance, as well as working with ULEMCo and Motive to disseminate the results to the Tees-Valley-Hydrogen-Transport-Hub and beyond. Further additionality is created for the UK, by having RAF-L assess hydrogen-fuel and propulsion technologies across its operations, as part of its Project ViTAL, a collaboration between the RAF Experimental Centre(RAFX), NU and industry to undertake analysis of emerging clean energy technologies for the RAF and the wider military.
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