Hydrogen Aviation: How Vanzetti Engineering Is Tackling the Cryogenic Challenge
By Marianna D’ Arcangelo, MBA, BA(Hons) Product Design & Engineering | CEO & Founder @ Golden Fenyx Digital Consultancy Ltd – 6th October 2026
When we picture the future of aviation, we tend to look up. We imagine quieter aircraft, new propulsion systems and radically different airframes. We think about what the aircraft might look like, how far it might travel and, increasingly, what it might use for fuel.
But some of the most important engineering work is happening somewhere passengers will never see.
Inside the systems that make the fuel usable.
That is where Vanzetti Engineering becomes particularly interesting.
Established in Italy in 1984, the company specialises in cryogenic pumps, developing systems for liquids that have to be handled at extremely low temperatures. Its expertise spans marine, automotive, industrial and aerospace applications, and in recent years that expertise has moved into one of aviation’s most technically demanding questions: how to handle liquid hydrogen safely and effectively.
At Farnborough International Airshow 2026, Vanzetti Engineering exhibited at Stand 1245, bringing a less visible — but potentially crucial — part of the future-flight conversation into focus.
Because before hydrogen can power an aircraft, engineers have to answer a very basic question:
How do you move it?
When “cold” becomes an engineering problem
Liquid hydrogen is not simply another aviation fuel. Hydrogen becomes liquid at temperatures below approximately −253°C. At that point, the challenge becomes much more than storing fuel. Materials, insulation, seals, tolerances, instrumentation, pressure and thermal management all become part of the equation.
DLR, the German Aerospace Center, describes the problem particularly clearly. Liquid hydrogen may need to travel from an aircraft’s tank to its turbine at pressures of up to 100 bar, requiring specialised pumps capable of operating under cryogenic conditions.
That changes the way we should think about hydrogen aviation.
The question is not simply:
Can hydrogen power an aircraft?
It is:
Can an entire system be designed to store it, move it, control it and deliver it reliably throughout a flight? That is a much harder engineering problem.
And it is one that cannot be solved by the propulsion system alone.
From cryogenic expertise to aerospace
Vanzetti Engineering did not enter this field by starting from scratch.
Its background is in cryogenic pumping, with decades of experience across industrial and marine applications. Farnborough describes the company as an OEM specialising in centrifugal and reciprocating cryogenic pumps, with applications across marine, automotive, industrial and aerospace sectors.
That experience becomes particularly relevant when the aviation industry starts looking at liquid hydrogen.
DLR’s own account of its collaboration with Vanzetti is revealing. The aerospace sector did not yet have a comparable aviation-ready pumping solution, while the maritime industry already had considerable experience with cryogenic fuel systems.
So the collaboration began by bringing knowledge from one demanding environment into another.
Not copying an existing solution. Adapting expertise to a new problem.
That distinction matters. Liquid hydrogen is not LNG. The physical characteristics and engineering requirements are different, and moving from one application to another requires substantial development and validation.
But decades of experience with cryogenic systems provide something valuable: an understanding of how difficult these environments can be before you even begin designing for them.
The DLR test: from concept to evidence
This is where the story moves from possibility to engineering evidence.
In early 2026, Vanzetti Engineering worked with DLR’s Institute of Propulsion Technology on a proof-of-concept test bench for a submerged liquid-hydrogen pump. The work formed part of DLR’s Future Propulsion Test Facility and was connected to the wider UpLift research programme. The facility is designed to investigate and validate technologies for hydrogen-based propulsion under relevant operating conditions. The tests were conducted in January and February 2026. And it is important to be precise about what they demonstrated. This was not a hydrogen-powered aircraft flight test. It was not a commercial aviation demonstration.
It was not proof that hydrogen-powered passenger aircraft are ready to enter service.
The tests reached Technology Readiness Level 4 (TRL 4): validation of components or prototypes in a laboratory environment. DLR describes this as an early step in a much longer development path.
That may sound modest.
Technically, it is significant.
The pump was tested under liquid-hydrogen conditions, generating data on performance, material behaviour, thermal insulation of the electric motor, tolerances and instrumentation. Independent industry reporting puts the test mass flow rate at up to 180 g/s.
This is what good engineering looks like when the headlines are removed.
You build something. You test it. You measure what happens under real conditions.
Then those measurements feed back into the simulations, helping engineers refine the models and investigate how the technology can be scaled towards the requirements of aviation.
The test is not the finish line. It is the evidence needed to decide what comes next.
The less visible architecture of future flight
This is perhaps the most compelling part of Vanzetti Engineering’s story.
Future aircraft will not be defined by one spectacular invention. They will be defined by how hundreds of technologies work together.
The tank has to work with the pump.
The pump has to work with the distribution system.
The distribution system has to work with the propulsion architecture.
Sensors have to tell engineers what is happening.
Materials have to withstand the environment.
Thermal management has to keep the system within its operating limits.
And ultimately, every part has to meet the demanding requirements of aerospace.
Safety. Reliability. Repeatability. Certification.
This is why enabling technologies deserve more attention.
They may never appear on the outside of the aircraft.
They may never be the part passengers talk about.
But without them, the aircraft may never leave the drawing board.
The Fenyx Perspective
With an MBA in IT Management and a background in Product Design & Engineering, I find the Vanzetti story particularly interesting because the headline ‘hydrogen’ is only one part of it.
The real story is systems thinking.
A future aircraft will not become viable because one component works beautifully in isolation.
It will become viable when the components work together.
That means looking beyond the obvious innovation.
The propulsion system matters.
So does the pump feeding it.
The aircraft architecture matters. So does the way the fuel is stored inside it. The software matters. So do the sensors producing the data that software relies on.
And the physical engineering matters just as much as the digital layer sitting above it.
That is why the development of technologies such as Vanzetti’s liquid-hydrogen pumping systems deserves attention.
They are part of the connective tissue of future aviation.
For investors, scalability matters.
For governments, industrial capacity and economic value matter.
The strongest innovation propositions are therefore not built around one benefit.
They are built around a connected system of benefits that different stakeholders can recognise as valuable. That is what JetZero has the opportunity to create, and that is why this isn’t simply an aircraft story. It is a systems-engineering story.
The road ahead
The DLR tests were an important step, but they are exactly that: a step.
The results are being used to refine simulations and investigate how the technology can be scaled towards the requirements of aviation. DLR describes the work as the beginning of a longer development journey rather than an endpoint.
That is worth emphasising.
There is no need to claim that hydrogen aviation is just around the corner. The more interesting reality is that the engineering groundwork is being built now.
The industry still has substantial questions to answer around storage, distribution, propulsion, aircraft integration, infrastructure, safety and certification.
But progress does not always look like an aircraft taking off.
Sometimes it looks like a test bench.
A pump.
A stream of data.
And engineers discovering that something they previously understood only in theory can actually work under the conditions that matter.
That is where Vanzetti Engineering finds itself today.
Not at the end of the hydrogen aviation story.
Somewhere near the beginning of one of its most difficult chapters.
The Fenyx Horizon | Farnborough Airshow 2026
This editorial is part of The Fenyx Horizon’s Farnborough Airshow 2026 innovation series. Vanzetti Engineering was selected for coverage following its presence and activity at the show and is featured as part of Golden Fenyx Digital Consultancy’s independent editorial coverage.
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“The future of flight will be built in the places most people never see.”
–The Fenyx Horizon x Vanzetti Engineering
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