Quantification Model of Airport Ground Support Equipment Emissions

Abstract

Emissions of aircraft support vehicles (called Ground Support Equipment or GSE) are produced by a series of factors depending mostly on the following: aircraft arrivals and departures and time spent in parking stands, aircraft type, operation type (traditional, with scale or low cost), geometrical arrangement of the apron and fleet charactistics, including power and years of use, among others. The aim of this work is to develop an integrated model identifying the required GSEs and the gaseous emissions produced by them due to apron traffic and aircraft service. In order to do this, in the case of service, the model proposes considering loading and unloading and dividing them into the following stages: wait, connection, service and disconnection. The advantage of the proposed model over other proposals is that this model aims at copying the real movements of support vehicles in service according to the aircraft and its corresponding operation (Full-Service, Low-Cost or scale). In order to do that, the program discretizes GSE movements into loading and unloading processes through different stages and for circulation where the tool itself sets the parameters of the apron.