Impact of alternative jet fuels on aircraft particle and trace gas emissions in cruise
Abstract
In the framework of the ECLIF/NDMAX project two flight campaigns funded by DLR and NASA were carried out in 2015 and 2018 to characterize the emissions of a medium-range passenger aircraft in cruise operating on alternative jet fuels. As a source aircraft the Advanced Technology Research Aircraft (ATRA), an A320 operated by DLR was used in both missions burning different mixtures of different alternative jet fuels with a well characterized conventional Jet-A1 fuel. The use of ATRA also permitted access to emission-relevant engine parameters at all times. In a number of formation flights utilizing the research aircraft DLR Falcon 20 in 2015 and the NASA DC8 in 2018 the particle and gas emissions were probed in-situ with a broad variety of instruments at distances reaching from the near field ~100m behind the engines to the far field of up to 40 km. Systematic test points were selected at typical cruising conditions at different altitudes, engine states and meteorological conditions including the formation of contrails. Hundreds of individual plume encounters were analyzed resulting in unprecedented statistics for such measurements. Here we report the results of our measurements of particulates and selected trace gases characterizing the emissions for different fuel properties. For the emissions of non-volatile particular clear correlations with the fuel aromatics content but additionally with the aromatics structure are found. This outlines the possibility to mitigate some of the aviation-induced climate impacts by using optimized alternative jet fuels. The results are compared to data acquired in ground based measurements performed between flights during the experiments.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.A32A..07S
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0321 Cloud/radiation interaction;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0345 Pollution: urban and regional;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 6344 System operation and management;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES