Particle Number Emission Indices from In-flight Aircraft

• Author / Creator

  Tran, Steven

• To reduce CO2 emissions, the aviation industry has begun looking into alternative biofuels as a replacement for conventional fossil-fuel based jet fuel. Although biofuels may reduce aircraft CO2 emissions, it is also important to consider how other emissions are effected such as particle emissions. Aircraft particle emissions have been studied extensively in the lab or on the ground with stationary aircrafts or test engine cells with few studies measuring emissions from aircraft in-flight. To study in-flight particle emissions, the National Research Council of Canada has equipped a measurement aircraft with condensation particle counters and a catalytic denuder to measure both non-volatile and total (volatile and non-volatile) particles. Two separate flight campaigns were undertaken to collect emissions data from aircrafts in-flight.
  The Civil Aviation Alternate Fuels Contrail and Emissions Research (CAAFCER) campaign involved the sampling of Air Canada Airbus A320 aircrafts during commercial flights. Two A320 aircraft equipped with CFM56-5A1 engines burning Jet A1 and a 43% hydrotreated esters and fatty acids (HEFA)/Jet A1 blend and another aircraft with CFM56-5B4/P engines burning Jet A1 were sampled. It was found that the particle number emission indices were similar amongst the tested engines and fuel types. The total particle emission index for particles greater than 7.7 nm ranged between 1.44 × 1017 to 2.17 × 1017 particles per kg of fuel, the total particle emission index for particles greater than 15.4 nm ranged between 1.73 × 1016 to 4.73 × 1016 kg-1, and the non-volatile particle emission index for particles greater than 13.3 nm ranged from 3.55 × 1015 to 6.76 × 1015 kg-1.
  In the Civil Aviation Alternate Fuels Contrails and Emissions with high Blend Biojet (CAAFCEB) campaign, the Falcon 20 research aircraft was sampled in-flight while fueled with an ethanol-based (ATJ) biofuel, JP-5 fuel and Jet A1 fuel. The objective of this flight campaign was to compare the particle emissions of the ATJ and JP-5 fuels to Jet A1 fuel. The total particle emissions for the JP-5 were found to be slightly larger than Jet A1 fuel with the total particle emissions for the JP-5 fuel being 1.29 to 1.52 times larger than for Jet A1. The ATJ biofuel on the other hand was found to significantly reduce total particle number emissions by up to 91% and non-volatile particle number emissions by 96% compared to Jet A1 fuel.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • biofuels
  • particle number emissions
  • aviation fuels
  • Aircraft emissions

• Graduation date

  Spring 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-3f0w-pw98

• License

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