Taking off with a liquid hydrogen engine
Phoenix Mecano pursues a long-term growth strategy based on growth drivers aligned with megatrends. It sees sustainable growth and profitability as essential for strengthening competitiveness, generating value and creating new jobs. Its decentralised corporate structure helps it stay close to customers, fosters continuous improvements in operational excellence, and enables it to maintain a lean cost base.
Time and again, Phoenix Mecano supports projects at an early stage, long before commercial implementation comes into play. One example is the CELLSIUS Project Liquid H2 being developed at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich), where mechanical engineers are working on making a hydrogen propulsion system so efficient that it can also be used as an aircraft engine.
Developments take time. With this in mind, ETH Zurich has devised the Focus Project model, which sees ten mechanical engineers work together on a project as part of their bachelor’s degree and then hand it over to the next team when they graduate. One such project involves an electric aircraft. Work on the e-Sling electric aircraft began in 2022. A hydrogen-powered aircraft, H2-Sling, was unveiled in 2025, with the first take-off planned for the summer of 2026. In the current CELLSIUS Focus Project, Liquid H2, the students are now working with liquid rather than gaseous hydrogen, as it has a much higher energy density, thereby boosting the efficiency of the existing hydrogen fuel cell. The students are reviewing and improving every aspect of the system used in the previous project, H2-Sling. Building on this year’s progress, the next team will continue in the 2026/27 academic year and integrate the system into a new aircraft. This research aims to demonstrate that hydrogen propulsion systems can also be used in aircraft construction, and how this can be achieved. Phoenix Mecano is supporting this project with its products and its own expertise in working with hydrogen, a highly promising energy source.
