Project description
Sustainable aviation fuels to reduce climate impact of contrails
Aviation impacts the climate, with contrail cirrus being a contributor to radiative forcing. These contrails form when soot particles from engine emissions mix with moisture in the air, leading to ice crystals. While using sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) could help reduce soot and ice crystal formation, testing has shown mixed results due to differences in fuels, engine types, and testing conditions. This makes it hard to draw clear conclusions. In this context, the EU-funded PACIFIC project will test a wide range of SAFs with consistent engine settings and fuel compositions. The project will improve models for soot formation, predict particle emissions more accurately, and assess SAF’s potential. This will support the development of sustainable aviation practices.
Objective
Among aviation’s non-CO2 impacts, the largest radiative forcing value is attributed to contrail cirrus. Recent tests have revealed an opportunity for lowering soot particles emissions and ice crystals -which play a pivotal role in contrail properties- through the use of SAF. However, substantial disparities remain among those test campaigns, involving a large variety of fuels, engine types and combustors. It is therefore not straightforward to compare and reconcile results.
In this context, PACIFIC aims to bridge the gap: the project will test an unprecedented set of fuels from lab up to engine/aircraft level with a similarity of hardware and combustion parameters. It will translate the results into modelling efforts, to better correlate: (i) soot formation, based on an improved Yield Soot Index database and prediction model; (ii) particle emissions, depending on fuel composition for the whole engine thrust range via an upgraded ground-to-flight correlation methodology; (iii) the ice forming potential of engine emissions, using advanced measurement methods on ground; (iv) the non-CO2 emission mitigation potential, through the impact assessment of fuel composition and engine cycle on contrail properties and radiative forcing, and longer-term climate impacts (including CO2 emissions fuel production). This will allow to consolidate the cost-benefit assessment of various fuel options and provide valuable inputs to potential future fuel-related measures.
By doing so, PACIFIC will pave the way for future fuel specifications minimizing the climate and local air quality impacts, and will provide important inputs to future modelling and testing work.
PACIFIC leverages on 11 partners from 4 countries, bringing together a unique combination of engine/aircraft manufacturers, fuel producers, research and academic expertise at the forefront of sustainable aviation, collectively driving advancements to help strengthening the European aeronautics' leadership position.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdatabases
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaircraft
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
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HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
31060 Toulouse
France