BRSupercool — Aviation Carbon Transition Programme context

Bristol Airport's Aviation Carbon Transition Programme

ACT is Bristol Airport's fund for practical projects that fast-track decarbonisation in the South West, focused on the Scope 3 emissions tied to the airport's value chain — aircraft operations, passenger travel, employee commuting, ground transport, waste and construction. BRSupercool exists to answer one part of that: what a hydrogen departure actually costs Bristol Airport's Scope 3 inventory, and what has to be true operationally for it to happen at all.

ACT 2026 award

Confirmed

BRSupercool funded

Match funding

In-kind

HyFlux libraries, maps & tooling

Delivery window

Jun–Nov

all work by 30 Nov 2026

Output

Scope 3

Cat 3 + Cat 11 per departure

23 APR 2026

Applications opened

29 MAY 2026

Deadline — closed

AWARDED

BRSupercool confirmed for ACT 2026

7 AUG

G1 data pack needed to hold the plan

30 NOV

All work delivered

The assessment criterion this whole site is built around

ACT requires that “projects must provide a robust, full assessment of carbon reduction benefits achievable with ACT funding, with methods, assumptions, baselines, and clear attribution to Bristol Airport's Scope 3 where applicable.” That sentence is why every number here traces to a versioned YAML assumption, why the Jet A1 baseline is stated explicitly (19,604 kg CO₂e/sector), why the evidence library scores what we model against what we don't, and why the data request names the owner and fallback for every item. It is also why we publish the cases where hydrogen loses.

The five ACT priority areas — and where BRSupercool sits

Alternative fuels primary fit

“Development and integration of lower-carbon aviation fuels (e.g. biofuels, hydrogen, synthetic fuels), including storage, handling, (de)refuelling, distribution, and enabling systems at Bristol Airport.”

BRSupercool models exactly this chain end to end — production, liquefaction, storage, distribution and on-stand refuelling — and returns per-departure Cat 3 + Cat 11 factors.

Infrastructure & operations primary fit

“Airside/landside improvements that cut emissions — e.g. enabling zero/low-emission flight, ground fleet electrification, energy efficiency, operational optimisation.”

The turnaround simulator answers whether a hydrogen turn fits BRS's schedule: 89 min serial vs 16.1 min with dual-hose and simultaneous activity. That is operational optimisation with a number attached.

Innovative technologies partial fit

“Early-stage or scalable solutions with clear potential to materially reduce aviation emissions.”

HyFlux's TPMS recuperator liquefier is modelled as a selectable option — 6.03 kWh/kg against an 11 kWh/kg baseline, worth ~360 kg CO₂e and 40p/kg per departure. Quantified rather than asserted.

Electricity adjacent

“Charging, storage, batteries, electrical distribution, and related airport technologies.”

We size the airside electrical load — liquefier MW class, ~860 kWh on-stand per turn — but we do not model distribution or storage assets. Data-request item 8 asks BRS for the headroom.

Local offsetting not in scope

“High-integrity local carbon reduction/removals that can offset applicable emissions.”

Out of scope for BRSupercool — this is the stream Johns Associates' biochar trial sits in. We reduce measured emissions rather than offset them.

Eligibility, stated plainly

UK-based organisations of any size; South West location desirable, not required.

HyFlux is UK-registered and Swansea-based — adjacent to, not inside, the South West. The project's geography is genuinely regional though: Avonmouth production, an 18-mile corridor and Bristol Airport as the demand point.

The projects ACT has already funded — and how we connect to each

Ultima Forma

LH₂ refuelling feasibility study

A first liquid-hydrogen refuelling concept for BRS: tanker delivery, buffer storage and airside distribution separated; vacuum-insulated storage with silvered copper pipework; thermal modelling and safety cases; boil-off managed by re-liquefaction rather than venting; apron locations assessed with the most practical away from the kerosene fuel farm; modular within COMAH thresholds.

Directly complementary. Our 70 kg vent per turn is the sizing input their re-liquefaction concept needs, and their thermal boundary conditions would settle our 0.3 %/day Dewar assumption. Their “away from the kerosene farm” finding is why our compound sits NW of the terminal.

easyJet

Electric ground handling equipment

Infrastructure to accelerate electrification of airside vehicles. A six-month trial saved 1,721 kg CO₂e — 59 kg emitted against 1,780 kg for like-for-like diesel equipment.

The best BRS-specific datum in existence for our Scope 1 co-benefit, which currently rests on an assumed 35 L of diesel displaced per turn. Data-request item 16 asks for an introduction.

Equilibrion

Nuclear-derived SAF and hydrogen

Eq.flight, a nuclear-enabled power-to-liquids system: paired with a small modular reactor it could produce ~130,000 t/yr of SAF — more than twice the airport's 2035 mandate need — with lifecycle reductions above 95%. Local distribution via Exolum; hydrogen options on the ground and in future aircraft; phased to a first commercial facility by the mid-2030s.

The natural partner for our pink_hinkley pathway, and the reason the residual Jet-A/SAF interaction matters: hydrogen removes demand from the liquid-fuel pool before SAF acts, so the two must be modelled together or abatement gets double-counted.

Johns Associates

Airfield carbon sequestration through biochar

Biochar applied beneath airfield grassland to raise soil carbon and improve the sward, reducing fertiliser use and supporting biodiversity while meeting CAA CAP772 wildlife hazard requirements. Four plots with matched controls and a botanical baseline.

No technical overlap — but a useful precedent for method discipline: pre-defined experimental and analytical methods, matched controls, baseline before intervention. That is the standard our PXLICE validation should be held to.

The bigger picture — Bristol Airport now hosts three government-funded hydrogen projects

DfT / Innovate UK Zero Emission Flight Demonstrator — announced 23 July 2026

The UK Government has confirmed Bristol Airport's involvement in three projects under the £8m ZEFD programme, including the first flight of a liquid-hydrogen-powered aircraft from a UK commercial airport. Dave Lees, CEO: “We hosted the UK's first airside hydrogen refuelling trial and our ACT Programme has funded several pioneering projects… The latest projects build on this work.”

CHOSAN · led by Badgerworks

The flights

With Bristol Airport, Unitrove and Weslake, in close collaboration with the CAA. Regional flights in a light hydrogen aircraft, first take-off from BRS within a couple of years. Weslake dual-fuel combustion engine, Fabrum composite LH₂ storage, Badgerworks fuel system, Unitrove refuelling. Badgerworks also runs an environmental assessment covering NOₓ, contrails and hydrogen leakage.

Touches our reference aircraft (light regional, not 150-pax), our architecture set (combustion is a third option we don't model), and our largest open gap — leakage fate and H₂ as an indirect GHG.

HyPRIME · led by ZeroAvia

The mobile refueller

Develops and demonstrates a mobile hydrogen refuelling vehicle capable of supporting both liquid-hydrogen aircraft and ground support equipment.

This is our bowser, being built for real — and FlyZero rated the mobile refueller vehicle the least mature component in the whole chain (TRL 1–2). Its actual cycle time, capacity and turnaround behaviour should replace our assumed 42-minute bowser cycle.

Equilibrion · 12-month feasibility

Supply, storage and management of LH₂ at BRS

With Bristol Airport as the live airport partner, examining “how liquid hydrogen can be supplied, stored, and managed at Bristol Airport to support future zero-emission aircraft operations.”

Direct scope overlap with BRSupercool's cold chain. This needs de-conflicting with the ACT team early — we should be consuming Equilibrion's infrastructure findings, not independently guessing at compound siting and storage sizing.

Earlier at BRS

What already exists

Project Acorn (2024) — the UK's first airside hydrogen refuelling trial. Ultima Forma (ACT) — LH₂ refuelling system concept. easyJet (ACT) — electric GSE trial. Plus membership of the Hydrogen in Aviation alliance with Airbus, GKN Aerospace and Rolls-Royce, and founding membership of Hydrogen South West.

BRS is not early in this — it is further ahead than our model assumes. Several of our "assumptions pending data" are already measured somewhere in this list.

What this means for BRSupercool — an honest repositioning

Three funded projects are now answering the airport-infrastructure questions our data request was asking: Equilibrion on supply and storage, ZeroAvia on the refueller, CHOSAN and Unitrove on refuelling operations and the environmental assessment. BRSupercool should stop trying to be a fourth opinion on infrastructure.

What remains uniquely ours is the part nobody else is doing: the coupled model and the Scope 3 accounting layer. No other project produces per-departure Cat 3 + Cat 11 emission factors attributable to Bristol Airport's inventory; no other project couples turnaround, cold chain and lifecycle into one tool BRS can re-run; and the superconducting cold-synergy case is HyFlux's alone. That is also precisely what ACT asked for — “clear attribution to Bristol Airport's Scope 3”.

The practical consequence: BRSupercool becomes the integration layer that turns three engineering projects into numbers Bristol Airport can report and defend. Our data request should be re-pointed from “tell us your assumptions” to “connect us to these three projects' outputs”.

The multiplier argument

ACT funds projects that use Bristol Airport as a test bed and produce something reusable. The emission factors BRSupercool produces apply to every hydrogen flight operating at BRS thereafter, regardless of operator — and the tools are documented Python that the ACT team and successor projects can re-run without HyFlux. That is the case for funding a model rather than a piece of hardware: the model keeps paying out after the money is spent, and it tells BRS which hardware to buy.

Where this sits in the wider Bristol Airport picture

Bristol Airport holds Airport Carbon Accreditation at Level 4+ (Transition), the tier that requires active engagement with value-chain — Scope 3 — emissions rather than operational carbon alone. ACT is the funding instrument for that engagement, and per-departure hydrogen emission factors are exactly the kind of evidence Level 4+ reporting needs. Source: bristolairport.co.uk — Aviation Carbon Transition Programme.