A Comprehensive Characterization of Particulate Matter, Trace Elements, and Gaseous Emissions of Piston-Engine Aircraft

Abstract

The gaseous and PM 10 emissions of a piston-engine aircraft during ground operations at different engine states (six engine speed points and three air/fuel mixtures) representing certain flight phases were concurrently measured from the exhaust duct. PM 10 emissions were sampled on a 47 mm-diameter polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) filter in order to be analyzed with an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS/MS) to identify the presence and level of forty-eight elements. The most abundant element is found to be Pb (med = 4.6 × 10 6 ng m −3 ), which is 40 times the second most abundant element, Na (med = 1.1 × 10 5 ng m −3 ). The filters used for sampling exhaust gases tend to lighten with an increase in engine speed and leaning of the fuel mixture. The average of measured PM mass concentrations at all engine speeds were calculated to be 27.7 mg m −3 (full-rich) > 26.7 mg m −3 (best-power) > 24.7 mg m −3 (best-economy). The total mass of the trace elements constitutes an average of 24.1 ± 12.8% of the mass of PM. Electron microscope analyses suggest that the particles enriched by Al tend to agglomerate in a needle-shaped structure.

Characterizing combustion performance and PM emissions of an aviation compression ignition engine by fueling RP-3 kerosene and RP-3/pentanol blends

“…21 Typically, the engine was only operated under very low engine speed (1600 RMP in this study), since the low engine speed required will prevent the loss of effective power due to sonic vibration occurrence at the propeller tips. (2) The maximum power-to-weight ratio of the test engine was up to 0.9, which was much higher than that of vehicular engine featured with a typical value lower than 0.7. This is because the test engine was designed in a lighter way (e.g.…”

“…1 By 2018, the GA aircraft fleet attained approximately to be 446,000, with 50% of this fleet being registered in the U.S by over 90% powered by APE and the remaining driven by turboprop-engines (GAMA 2018). 2,3 Typically, the APE can be classified into two categories, including the spark ignition (SI) engine and compression ignition (CI) engine. Even though the conventional APE is operated under the SI mode, whereas, due to the reliability, stability, simplified logistic and fuel economy availability, the CI mode burning heavy fuels (light diesel or kerosene) deployed in APE is experiencing a wide application in agriculture used aircraft, civil helicopters, military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and military helicopters, etc.…”

Review of morphological and chemical characteristics of particulates from compression ignition engines

“…Most soot agglomerates exhibited spherical particles. 476 However, few agglomerates showed relatively dispersed and irregular morphology. Aluminum-enriched particles exhibited needle-shaped aggregates.…”