Flightpath 2050 from the European Union (EU) sets ambitious targets for reducing the emissions from civil aviation that contribute to climate change. Relative to aircraft in service in year 2000, new aircraft in 2050 are to reduce CO2 emissions by 75% and NOx emissions by 90% per passenger kilometre flown. While significant improvements in asset management and aircraft and propulsion system efficiency and are foreseen, it is recognised that the Flightpath 2050 targets will not be met with conventional jet fuel. Furthermore, demands are growing for civil aviation to target zero carbon emissions in line with other transportation sectors, rather than relying on offsetting to achieve 'net zero'. A more thorough and rapid greening of the industry is seen to be needed to avoid the potential economic and social damage that would follow from constraining air travel. This requires a paradigm shift in propulsion technologies. Two technologies with potential for radical decarbonisation are hydrogen and electrification. Hydrogen in some form seems an inevitable solution for a fully sustainable aviation future. It may be used directly as a fuel or combined with carbon from DAC (direct air capture of CO2) or other renewable carbon sources,
There is a growing interest in the use of alternative fuels in gas turbine engines to reduce emissions. Testing of alternative fuels is expensive when done on a large-scale gas turbine engine. In this study, a re-commissioned small gas turbine auxiliary power unit (APU) has been used to test various blends of Jet A-1, synthetic paraffinic kerosene (SPK) and diesel with as well as eight other novel fuels. A detailed analysis of performance, gaseous emissions and particulate emissions has been presented in this study. It is observed that aromatic content in general as well as the particular chemical composition of the aromatic compound plays a vital role in particulate emissions generation. SPK fuel shows substantially lower particulate emissions with respect to Jet A. However, not all the species of aromatics negatively impact particulate emissions. Gaseous emissions measured are comparable for all the fuels tested in this study.
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