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About the emissions of alternative jet fuels

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Abstract

In the last years, several alternative aviation jet fuels have been approved as a response to worldwide concerns on adverse environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions. However, comprehensive emissions studies are not part of the approval process. When burning a jet fuel, the exhaust gases are a mixture of gaseous specious including aromatics and non-gaseous species, particles, and soot. In addition, these species may affect the growth and lifetime of contrails known to be of influence on the climate due to their radiative forcing. Within this context, the use of synthetic aviation fuels may offer several advantages, going beyond reduced CO2 emissions. These issues were addressed by studying the combustion of synthetic jet fuels taking into account their individual composition. An overview of what is known on their emission pattern was presented. Mostly, the same general trends were reported for the emissions of interest, for the fuels considered and at the power settings selected, with no adverse emissions effects. In particular, less soot particle emissions were reported, in mass and in number concentration, for GtL, HEFA, and farnesane. Moreover, a strong link between the amount and type of aromatics content of a jet fuel and soot emissions was observed.

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Acknowledgements

The financial support of the European Commission within the tender “Condensation trails from biofuels/kerosene blends scoping study”, ENER/C2/2013-627, is gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank A. Zschocke for sharing the experimental results on emissions of farnesane-kerosene mixtures, K.P. Gierens for fruitful discussions, and M. Kapernaum and M. Dietrich for assistance.

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  1. Institute of Combustion Technology, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Pfaffenwaldring 38-40, 70569, Stuttgart, Germany

    Marina Braun-Unkhoff, Uwe Riedel & Claus Wahl

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  1. Marina Braun-Unkhoff
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  2. Uwe Riedel
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  3. Claus Wahl
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Correspondence to Marina Braun-Unkhoff.

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This paper is based on a presentation at the German Aerospace Congress, September 22–24, 2015, Rostock, Germany.

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Braun-Unkhoff, M., Riedel, U. & Wahl, C. About the emissions of alternative jet fuels. CEAS Aeronaut J 8, 167–180 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13272-016-0230-3

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