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Fuel cells have been under considerable interest for both commercial and military aviation applications for power generation needed for advanced computational and communication systems on board aircraft, as well as for other power requirements needed both while in flight and on the ground. However, in order to power the fuel cells, hydrogen must be generated at some point, the ideal source being the logistic fuels such as JP-5 or JP-8 that is already used for propulsion. This process is not trivial, as several potential issues can arise from processing logistic fuel, the two primary concerns being the effect of sulfur within the fuel on the processing and fuel cell components, and the longevity issues resulting from coke formation during fuel processing. In the first part of this paper, we look as work that we have performed that addresses some of these issues for the steam reforming of JP-5 to produce pure hydrogen for fuel cell use.

Modern aerospace avionics systems demand both an increased use of networks and an increase in the capacity of such networks. It is quite common today to find links of 1 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) or higher being designed into aircraft. At these rates, the transmission medium of choice is generally fiber optics since copper media at such rates generally perform poorly at lengths of more than a few tens of feet. While fiber optics use proliferates and improves in a number of important ways, in one respect important to the aerospace industry, it remains stuck in the 70's. That aspect has to do with the way a link is diagnosed when it has problems. Troubleshooting a fiber optic link generally requires the intervention of a skilled technician, sometimes requiring the use of sophisticated diagnostic equipment. This paper describes the features needed to provide self-diagnosis capability to fiber optics transceivers.