Professional Documents
Culture Documents
May 2008
Sustainable Aviation:
Future Air Transportation and the
Environment
Ilan Kroo
Presentation only. Not for publication. Please do not reproduce without permission.
+70%
Second generation
jet engines
767-200
0%
787
-20%
New generation
jet engines
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
29 Gal
2005
Issues:
Safety
Efficiency
Noise
NOx
CO2
H2O
Research Thrusts
Research Thrust:
Managing Air Transportations Environmental Footprint
Goals: Active flight management from the vehicle
level to the complete air transportation system
Critical technologies:
Research Thrust:
Safely Increase Air Transportation System Capacity
Next generation air traffic management
system is vital to achieve worldwide goals:
Improve capacity
Improve security
Sustain safety
Future
continuous descent arrival (to save 100 gallons per approach)
feather aircraft onto arrival path based on arrival time
tighten lateral dispersion
600 foot separation for IFR approach
Research Thrust:
Aerospace Design for the Environment
Goals: Active/intelligent aircraft design for dramatic
efficiency increases
Critical Technologies:
Integrated modeling of vehicles, atmospheric impact,
and noise
Optimization of new aircraft concepts and
operations including environmental impact
Distributed, adaptive sensing and control
Go
4.20
od
Go
1.6
1.0
1.64
Liquid
Hydrogen
od
1.0
Ethanol
Volume
Jet A
Syn-Jet(1)
Bio-Jet (2)
Jet-A is
best per
unit
volume
(BTU/ft3)
0.36
Liquid
Hydrogen
Hydrogen
is best
per unit
weight
Jet A Ethanol
Syn-Jet
Bio-Jet
Weight
(BTU/lb)
*Equivalent Energy
(1)
(2)
Challenges:
4X larger fuel tanks
Reduced emissions
Lower takeoff weight
Higher drag
Higher empty weight
H2 production issues
New infrastructure
Cost
High technical risk
H2 Tanks
Passenger acceptance
Environmental effects?
Bio-Jet Fuel
Gas-to-Liquid (GTL)
Synthetic Jet Fuel
Plants
Oil base
Natural Gas
GTL plant
Energy Source
Processing
End Product
Air-to-air refueling:
Progress on automated
aerial refueling for military -of particular interest for
UAVs
20% fuel
savings
8% better
SFC
Courtesy Boeing
Courtesy Airbus
Green Supersonics
Summary