CESA will be participating, through its branch in Seville, in the ECORPAS project “Designing a remotely piloted aircraft with an advanced power unit based on a fuel cell system for environmental monitoring applications”, financed by the CDTI (Centre for Industrial Technological Development of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) with funds from the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) Innterconecta programme to promote the generation of innovative capacities in less-developed regions.
The main objective of the project is the development of an unmanned system (UAV) for environmental monitoring applications with great autonomy, the main power unit of which will be based on high-temperature PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel cell technology.
CESA is responsible for the design and development of the system’s power system. CESA will thus make any necessary changes in the fuel cell developed by CESA in previous programmes to enable UAV flight. This would make CESA a pioneer in the development of high-temperature fuel cells, since until now this technology has only been validated in laboratory conditions, never in flight. CESA will be collaborating with the INTA (National Aerospace Technology Institute) for this task.
The consortium is comprised of Andalusian businesses and is led by AERTEC Ingeniería y Desarrollos S.L., a company that performs specialized engineering and consulting work for airports, the aerospace industry and defence. In turn, SKYLIFE ENGINEERING S.L., experts in avionics systems, power electronics and data bus interfaces will also be a member of the consortium, developing the Power Control System. Furthermore, the INTA and FADA-CATEC (Advanced Centre for Aerospace Technologies) will participate as subcontracted research centres. The ATLAS Centre for Experimental Flights belongs to FADA-CATEC, and this is where the flight test programme is expected to be performed.
The expected duration of the project is 2 and a half years as from the launch meeting that took place in December 2015. The ECORPAS project comprises 4 main milestones: definition of the system specifications, design and development of the 3 main subsystems (platform and control and mission systems, and power and power control systems), integration tests on land and tests in flight.
