Characterization of emissions from the use of alternative aviation fuels

Alternative fuels for aviation are now a reality. These fuels not only reduce reliance on conventional petroleum-based fuels as the primary propulsion source, but also offer promise for environmental sustainability. While these alternative fuels meet the aviation fuels standards and their overall properties resemble those of the conventional fuel, they are expected to demonstrate different exhaust emissions characteristics because of the inherent variations in their chemical composition resulting from the variations involved in the processing of these fuels. This paper presents the results of back-to-back comparison of emissions characterization tests that were performed using three alternative aviation fuels in a GE CF-700-2D-2 engine core. The fuels used were an unblended synthetic kerosene fuel with aromatics (SKA), an unblended Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthetic paraffinic kerosene (SPK) and a semisynthetic 50-50 blend of Jet A-1 and hydroprocessed SPK. Results indicate that while there is little dissimilarity in the gaseous emissions profiles from these alternative fuels, there is however a significant difference in the particulate matter emissions from these fuels. These differences are primarily attributed to the variations in the aromatic and hydrogen contents in the fuels with some contributions from the hydrogen-to-carbon ratio of the fuels.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye