Emissions from General Aviation in the Republic of Croatia

V. Sraga1, Z. Luli1*
1
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture

Abstract
All EU member states are obligated to collect, process and deliver data about emissions from different sources in the
form of so-called Emission Inventory. Because of lack of data, specific subareas like emissions from aircraft were not
in depth analysed. Within this research, register of civil aircraft of the Republic of Croatia and available flight data
were analysed. Using recommended emission factors from the literature (EMEP/EEA), emissions from general
aviation aircraft in Croatia were assessed. Because of the age of the investigated aircraft and their IC engines, some
of emissions could be easily bigger for two orders of magnitude, compared to up-to-date road vehicles.

Aviation Agency (CCAA). The keeping of the

Introduction
An emission inventory is a document which
summarises the amount of air pollutants from different
sources. Inventories can be different in
comprehensiveness. They can include pollutants from
various types of sources and different size of the area
as well. The most common type is emission inventory
of certain country, often divided into smaller parts by
type of pollutant source or so-called sector. So far, in
the Republic of Croatia emission inventory was made
by TIER 1 method [1]. That method is based on fuel
consumption for the specific combustion process. It
allows fast analyses of many different subareas.
Unfortunately, the flight of an aircraft is a complex
type of activity. Some of many variables which affect
emission from the aircraft engines are the type of
engine and airspeed and altitude of an aircraft. Other
influencing data depends on flight phases during flight
which have to be correctly identified according to
typical flight paths. Fuel consumption and emission
vary from taxiing on the airport, through take-off,
climb, cruise, approach and landing on the end.
Furthermore, some aircraft fly few of these cycles
within 1 hour, while other make just one cycle in two
or more hours. That depends on the main purpose and
task of certain aircraft and/or certain flight.
Analysis of CCAA Aircraft Register
At the beginning of this research, it was important
to determine the real number of general aviation
aircraft in the Republic of Croatia. That was planned
to be done by analysing the Croatian Register of Civil
Aircraft [2]. At the first look, the Register looked like
a mess. It was a surprising number of approximately
400 aircraft in the Register. In talks with persons
whose work is closely tied to general aviation, the real
expected number of currently active and flying general
aviation aircraft should be around 100 or 150, and
definitely not exceeding 200. That means detail
analyse must be done to get more realistic numbers
from the Register. Authority responsible for keeping
Croatian Registry of Civil Aircraft is Croatian Civil
Register includes entering of aircraft into Register,
entering and change of relevant aircraft data and
removal of aircraft from Register [3]. The register is
available for download from the official CCAA
website. They issue a new version of the Register at
the beginning of each month. The Register consist of
a list of registered aircraft sorted by registration.
Another information available about aircraft is an ID
number of the aircraft in the Register, manufacturer of
the aircraft, type of the aircraft, serial number, owner
and owners address. That kind of information is not
detailed enough for this research. Missing information
is the status of aircraft, i.e. aircraft airworthiness status
and another very important data the type, make and
model of the aircrafts powerplant. It is clear now that
the first objective or the Phase I of work was to collect
those additional information which will enable
complete analysis to make the Register as useful as
possible.
The edition of the Register dated the October of
2010 [4] was used because it contained a data about
the status of the aircraft, indicating if the particular
aircraft is active or inactive. Inactive aircraft is aircraft
without current airworthiness validation, what means
that it currently cannot conduct any flights, i.e. make
any emissions. Another problem with the current
Register is that it contains a lot of aircraft which are
not flying anymore, especially aircraft which were
marked active in 2010, but now are inactive due to
different reasons. For example, it could be that specific
aircraft had an accident during that period or aircraft
reached hour limits for the frame and is now used as
static display aircraft or it is scrapped. This type of
information was collected from different sources. A
lot of time was spent on searching relevant
information, especially the website of Agency for
accident investigation in the air, maritime and rail
transport [5]. After eliminating inactive aircraft,
further efforts were made to determine the type of
powerplant of the aircraft in the Register. In that
process, manufacturers websites and other online and
physical collections of data were used [6]. This work

*
Corresponding author: zoran.lulic@fsb.hr
Proceedings of the European Combustion Meeting 2017
has shown that in the Register of Civil Aircraft of the
Republic of Croatia are a piston and jet engine
powered airplanes and helicopters, gliders, hang-
gliders, hot-air balloons, ultra-light aircraft and
experimental aircraft which is still in the testing phase
of production or reparation. From all of these
categories, in focus of this research was primarily the
piston engine powered aircraft as a typical
representative of general aviation aircraft. For every
piston-powered aircraft in the Register, specific make
and model of the engine were determined by
additional engine specification like displacement,
power output, cylinder number needed for later
analysis of emissions. As shown in Figure 1, engine
sorting was done by the quantity of particular engine
in the Register.
Number of aircraft engines
0 10 20 30 40
Lycoming O-320
Rotax 912
Rotax (2 cylinder
Lycoming O-360
Continental TSIO-360
Continental O-200
Continental IO-520
Lycoming IO-540
Continental IO-360
Lycoming IO-360
Other
Figure 1. Types of piston engine in
CCAA Aircraft Register
The results showed that the most used aircraft
engine in the Republic of Croatia is Lycoming O-320
in 28 Croatian registered airplanes. On the second
place are Rotax 912 engine and other Rotax engines,
mostly the two cylinder engines, frequently used on
ultra-light aircraft. To exactly know engine type
installed on aircraft, every aircraft would need to be
checked. To expedite the research, those different
Rotax engines were approximated with well-known
912 engine. Next in the list are Lycoming O-360 with
8, Continental TSIO-360 with 6, Continental O-200
with 6, Continental IO-520 with 5, Lycoming IO-540
with 5 and Continental IO-360 with 4 appearances in
the Register. Another engine models with 3 or fewer
appearances are shown together in Figure 1 as
Other. It is important to distinguish the meaning of
the markings in the name of an aircraft engine. For
example, Continental TSIO-360 means that engine
manufacturer is Continental company, and letters and
numbers designate that engine is turbo (T), super-
charged (S), fuel injected (I), opposite cylinder (O)
with 360 cubic inches of engine displacement. To
summarise that part of work, it was revealed the total
number of 125 aircraft piston engines in the Republic
of Croatia, with 17 different types of engines.
2
With analysed Register data, it is possible to
determine the number of active aircraft operators. That
is important information because complete analysis of
every aircraft would be oversized work to do in terms
of acceptable duration of this research. It is much
faster if the representative sample of aircraft and
aircraft operators is explored with a little or even none
loss of accuracy. Analysis of aircraft operators
revealed, as shown in Figure 2, that Croatian Aviation
Training Centre (CATC) is in the top of the list with 5
aircraft. Another interesting fact is that they operate 4
different types of aircraft equipped with 4 different
types of engine, ranging from two-seat composite-
made single engine aircraft to 4 seat aluminium frame
multi-engine aircraft.
Number of aircraft
0 20 40 60 80
Air Tractor Ltd. 8
CATC 5
Aeroclub "Zagreb" 3
Pilot club "Wing 3
Ecos pilot school- 3
Jung Sky Ltd. 3
PAN AERO 3
Shaft Ltd. 3
Owners with 2 or 60
Private owner 62
Figure 2. Operators by number of aircraft
in their fleet
Contacting the operator, which is closely
connected to Faculty of Transport and Traffic
Sciences, revealed that they also use aircraft from two
other Croatian operators during peak flying months of
the year. CATC is Approved Training Organisation
primarily conducting flight training courses for
students on Civil Pilot study of the mentioned Faculty.
It is assumed that this organisation is the biggest flight
training organisations in Croatia. The organisation is
well governed with all needed licences and approvals.
That is clearly visible in how they collect, process and
keep flight data of every aircraft used. That flight data
were analysed in detail during this research. With help
from professors, students and instructors from CATC
and Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, flight
data sorted by a code of specific exercise were
decoded into typical part of flight with assumed
speed or throttle setting. Total flight time was divided
into two main types of flights VFR circuits or route
flying.
Flight data analysis
With representative operator chosen, work is
moved to the second objective which is a
determination of activities and most common patterns
of aircraft usage. This was done by gathering the one-
year flight data from the particular operator. By
analysing flight data, the average flight path is
specified for this operator to make a representation of
a typical flight path of the general aviation aircraft in
the Republic of Croatia. Two typical flight patterns
were determined by analysing flight data, as shown in
Figure 3. Total flight time and the number of Landing
and Take-Off (LTO) cycles were divided between
those two patterns.
FLIGHT TIME [h]
2500
2108
2000
1500
1000
430
500
0 The second typical flight profile is usual route
CIRCUITS
Figure 3. Total flight time and LTO cycles divided
into two flight patterns circuits and routes
Flying in airfield traffic circuits and route flying
are completely different and opposite, but equally used
during the flight training. Between those extremes is
so-called zone flying, which has different elements,
sometimes similar to flying in circuits and sometimes
is like a route flying. Zone flying was counted as one
of the established profiles, depending on exercise tasks
in a particular flight during zone flying. One of the
main features of circuit flying is a short time needed to
complete one landing and take-off cycle.
1200
1000
Altitude [feet AGL]
800
600
400
200
0 0%
0 10 20 30 40
time [min]
Figure 4. Average profile of flying in training
circuits
That cycle, which is performed one time with one
circuit, begins with on-ground aircraft checks and after
starting the engine, engine operation is also checked.
That is the point where analysis of this research starts.
In this part of flight, engine runs at idle power setting.
After completing the checkouts, taxiing to the runway
is performed. On-ground checks and taxiing to and
from runway does not need to be done in every circuit
because the touch-and-go procedure can be made, in
which aircraft lands on the runway and immediately
after touch-down accelerates again and take-off
without fully stopping the aircraft. After taxiing,
aircraft continues to take-off phase, which last half of
a minute in average and it is done with 100% of the
available engine power, i.e. full power. With the same
throttle setting, aircraft continue to climb to 1000 feet
Above Ground Level (AGL). At that cruise altitude,
the pilot reduces throttle to approximately 70% of full
power, setting the aircraft into the cruise configuration
for horizontal flight. At this point, the pilot is on the
so-called downwind leg of the circuit, which means he
already done two turns. Before the third turn, pilot
reduces throttle again to approx. 40% and starts
LTO CYCLES descending. After the fourth turn begins the final
2300
approach where the aircraft lines-up with runway
direction and lands on it. With the touch-down, the
1325 pilot is slowing the aircraft down and taxi to parking
position or increases the power again to 100% and
starts the new circuit immediately. In this research is
determined that in average 6 circuits are made in one
training flight.
ROUTE flying, with the intention of travel from the airfield A
to the airfield B. It also consists of the main parts
described in circuits profile, with one distinction the
cruise part of flight is performed on a higher altitude,
usually above 6000 feet Above Sea Level (ASL) and
it lasts much longer.
8000 100%
7000 90%
Altitude [feet ASL]
80%
6000
70%
5000 60%
Power
4000 50%
3000 40%
30%
2000
20%
100% 1000 10%
80% 0 0%
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
time [min]
60%
Power
Figure 5. Average profile of route flying
40%
It is important to point out, that each flight of an
20% aircraft is unique regarding the exact power setting in
a particular part of flight, but here represented profiles
are determined as a mean statistical value based on all
50 60 70 flights in one year. More detail analysis would include
a recording of flight parameters on each flight and
each aircraft. The complexity of that kind of analysis
would not be effective comparing to the difference of
final results, so the use of this two averaged profile for
this research is logical and the most effective in terms
of the required time and equipment.
Emission Factors
In the third phase, collecting of appropriate
emission factors needs to be made. Those emission
factors must be from reliable sources like engine
manufacturers or environmental agencies which have
made lists of emission factors by measuring an air
pollutant emissions of the particular combustion
object in our case aircraft engine. The emission
factor is a specific factor in the form of a number
3
which links objects activity to the emission of the Table 2. Divided flight time of aircraft [hh:mm]
pollutants [7]. Examples of emission factors are shown Registration Circuits Route
in Table 1. Represented factors are determined by the
US Environmental Protection Agency [8] for DAD 29:11 376:35 405:47
Lycoming O-320 engine. DAS 97:54 235:20 333:15
Table 1. Emission factors and fuel rate of Lycoming DIG 39:45 234:39 274:25
O-320 engine throughout different phases [kg/hr] DMB 113:59 43:15 157:15
Fuel Total DZG 85:10 157:09 242:20
Mode CO NOX SOX 28:39 201:35 230:15
Rate HC NIR
Idle 4.30 4.63 0.0022 0.159 0.0 PAA 24:03 46:01 70:05
Take-off 40.4 43.5 0.088 0.475 0.01 PAB 11:05 29:54 41:00
Cruise 30.3 29.9 0.120 0.375 0.01
429:50 1324:31 1754:22
Approach 21.1 25.8 0.020 0.406 0.0
As mentioned before, each flight consists of one or
Mentioned activity in case of aircraft engine can be
more LTO cycles. For circuits flying, an average
an hour of operation, power setting, fuel consumption,
number of take-off and landing is 6, while for flying
etc. The basic equation for calculating emission of
on a route is 2. It is important to note that in normal
specific pollutant is:
procedures, route flying consists of only one LTO
= cycle, but that is not a rule for Flight Training
Organisations, because often in flying on a route,
Using this method, emission of the observed additional tasks are included. For example, a student
aircraft is calculated. When this procedure is carried pilot is flying from Zagreb Airport to Osijek Airport.
out for the whole fleet of the relevant operator, The main task of this flight is Instrumental Flying
projection of the results to other operators and aircraft Rules (IFR) navigation training, but at Osijek Airport,
can be made, which will lead to the final result of total student pilot performs approach training with one
emissions from general aviation in the Republic of touch-and-go and one full stop landing. This results in
Croatia. This is carried out with following equations: typical route flight, with one additional LTO cycle.
With that in mind, we multiply the appropriate number
( ) = [ ] [] of LTO cycles per flight with the quantity of flights in
particular profile. In every flight, 10 minutes is spent
on taxiing, in average. That time is multiplied by a
where (EC)jl are emissions of l-th pollutant by one
number of flights which calculates the total time spent
aircraft in circuits part of complete annual flight-time.
on taxiing for every aircraft.
EFil is emission factor in particular part of flight i of
pollutant l, and ti is a time of that part of the flight. That Table 3. Time spent on taxiing in one year
product is summarised for the one complete circuit
Registration Time [hours]
which consists of n phases, and then emission of all m
circuits is calculated. The same is done for route flying DAD 48:49
part of flight-time by the equation: DAS 42:23
DMB 16:31
( ) = [ ] [] DZG 42:03

DIG 39:03
where ( ) are annual emissions of l-th pollutant by NIR 37:32
one aircraft in route flying part of total annual flight- PAA 14:28
time. Other variables are the same as described before. PAB 9:24
Ultimately, the total emissions for l-th air pollutant are 250:13
calculated by summing emissions from o investigated
That time is subtracted from total flight time and
aircraft:
rest of the flight time is divided into phases of flight
following established profiles of flight.
= (( ) + ( ) ) Next step is to calculate emissions from one
aircraft. That is done by multiplying calculated flight
time by phases in previous step with the corresponding
Results and Discussion emission factors. Results assorted by type of engine
After establishing an appropriate methodology for are shown in Figure 6.
this research, all required calculations were For Lycoming O-320 and Rotax 912, an average of
performed. Each aircrafts flight time was divided all aircraft with that engine in the fleet was taken.
between circuits flying and route flying. That process
resulted in data shown in Table 2.

4
 IO-360 O-320 O-360 Rtx 912 of Croatia. After that, the total emissions were
12000 150 calculated with summing emission from all engines.

NOx, HC, SOx [kg/year]

10000 1000 942,36 12,99 14
12
CO [kg/year]

8000 100 800

CO [tonns/year]

NOx, HC, SOx

10

[tonns/year]
6000
600 8
4000 50
400 6
2000 3,24 4
200
0 0 0,21 2
CO NOx HC SOx 0 0
Figure 6. Average emissions of aircraft engines in CO NOx HC SOx
CATCs fleet
Figure 8. Total emission from piston engine powered
From that data, average emissions from one general aviation aircrafts in the Republic of Croatia
aircraft piston engine were calculated. That numbers based on estimated EFs
were multiplied by a total number of 125 aircraft
Values shown in Figures 7 and 8 show that both
piston engines in Republic of Croatia, which gave us
types of the last step in calculation give similar results.
first estimation about total emission from general
Results based on the estimation of emission factors for
aviation in the Republic of Croatia.
each engine have shown a 13.1% increase in CO
1000 14 emissions, a 17% increase in NOX emissions, a 13%
833,09 11,50
12 increase in HC emissions, while SOX emissions have
800
CO [tonns/year]

NOx, HC, SOx

10 remained the same as in the calculation of averaged

[tonns/year]

600 engine emissions.

400
2,77
200
0 0
CO NOx HC
Figure 7. Estimation of total emissions from piston-
engine powered general aviation aircraft in the
Republic of Croatia averaged
For results validation, more complex process of
total emissions calculation was conducted. Instead of
calculating averaged engine emissions, flight data
from CATC were projected to other operators.
Emission factors for engines which were not available
from the literature are estimated by comparing similar
8
The quantity of the most used fuel in general
6 aviation, AVGAS 100 LL, put on Croatian market
4 from 2012 to 2015 is shown in Figure 9. The
0,21 2 difference in linear estimation and calculated fuel
consumption for the 2016 year is caused by using
SOx flight data from typical flight training organisation
which is the most active type of organisation, what
means that calculated fuel consumption is above
average, while expected realistic values are roughly at
mean values of fuel consumption from previous years.
Real consumption
Calculated in research
Linear (Real consumption)
1000 881
tonns/year

750
engines. For example, emission factors for Lycoming 452 400 384
500 324
IO-540 were calculated by multiplying known 250
emission factors for Lycoming IO-360 [8] by 1.5. The
0
factor 1.5 is equal to cylinder number ratio 6:4. That 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
gives sufficiently accurate values because those
engines are very similar in design with the same bore Figure 9. AVGAS 100 LL fuel consumption
and stroke. The main difference between them is a
From values in Figure 8, emission factors were
number of cylinders and consequently a displacement.
calculated for average aircraft engine and compared to
Table 4. Estimation of unknown emission factors modern gasoline powered passenger car equipped with
IO-360 (EPA) IO-540 (estimation) three-way catalyst [9]. That is important comparison
[kg/hr] [kg/hr] due to fact that aircraft with piston engine do not have
any advanced engine management and any exhaust
Fuel 46,7 x 1,5 = 70,05
after-treatment system. It can be seen in Figure 10 that
CO 56 x 1,5 = 84 aircraft piston engine produces almost 24 times more
NOX 0,093 x 1,5 = 0,1395 gramm of CO per kilogramm of fuel than passenger
HC 0,469 x 1,5 = 0,7035 car engine. Emission of hydrocarbons (HC) is almost
SOX 0,01 x 1,5 = 0,015 50 times higher. NOX emissions are two times lower
That type of calculation was made for every piston in aircraft engines. SOX emissions are both quite low.
engine used in general aviation aircraft in the Republic

5
 Average aircraft engine results showed significantly higher emissions of
an aircraft compared to an modern passenger car,

NOx, HC, SOx [g/kg fuel]

Passenger car with three-way catalyst but taking into account the size of each group the
1500 20,0 total aircraft emissions are still very small;
aircraft piston engines should be equipped with
CO [g/kg fuel]

15,0
1000 exhaust after-treatment system and better engine
10,0 management systems to reduce extreme CO and
500 HC emissions.
5,0
Acknowledgements
0 0,0
CO NOx HC SOx Special thanks to prof. Anita Domitrovi, Dino
Bajlo and Igor epec from Faculty of Transport and
Figure 10. Car and general aviation aircraft Traffic Sciences and to Croatian Aviation Training
emission factors compared Centre.
So much higher CO and unburned hydrocarbons References
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significantly;