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Vol. 1 No. 1 (2022): May 2022 Issue

Hydrogen fuel cell-powered drone ambulance for the emergency medical services

Ethan Taylor
JJ Rivera

Corresponding Author(s) : Ethan Taylor

etaylor27@atu.edu

Future Energy, Vol. 1 No. 1 (2022): May 2022 Issue

Abstract

Many lives can be saved by defibrillation within the first minutes after sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). The main problem here is that the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) - even with the inclusion of other ‘first responders’ (police, fire brigade) - often do not arrive within the first critical 5–10 min after an OHCA. Further strengthening the survival network to ameliorate response time might impact outcome but is hampered by cost, lack of qualified workforce, and geography. Considering the yearly operational cost of a ground-based ambulance (including personnel, vehicle, materials, and overhead), the development of the survival network is expensive. Therefore, alternatives are required. In this context, using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has been developed. However, the main problem here is that the traditional batteries powering the existing drones are not able to perfectly meet the flight time requirements in the drone ambulance missions because the energy density of the employed conventional batteries is extremely low. The hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) technology is showing to be a prominent source of power in the interest of increasing the flight time of UAVs, notably for its unrivaled efficiency and increasing popularity.

Keywords

Drone Ambulance Hydrogen Fuel Cell
Taylor, Ethan, and JJ Rivera. 2022. “Hydrogen Fuel Cell-Powered Drone Ambulance for the Emergency Medical Services”. Future Energy 1 (1):6-11. https://fupubco.com/fuen/article/view/9.
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