Recently in Emissions Category

The US Air Transport Association (ATA) has fired its first shot across the Obama administration's bows as it continues its fight to prevent emissions trading, or other market-based tools, in the USA. ATA president and CEO James C May has written this for the National Journal's transportation expert blog.

The next day he was followed by his equivalent at the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), Marion Blakey, on a related tack. Not a coincidence, I think it can be assumed.

I haven't been to New Zealand and chances are you haven't either. But New Zealanders go to a lot of places - notably the UK - frequently a long way away, and usually by air. And those people who do go to NZ also generally fly a long way to get there. The Kiwis, who I mentally stereotype as the Scandinavians of the South, have the good grace to worry about what all this flying is doing carbon-wise.

View imageYou know, soot and stuff like that. The sort of thing that is an issue at and around airports. It hasn't been quite as thoroughly researched during a period when the focus has been on less visible and more damaging things like NOX and CO2. But it's a problem - and for airport planners and their regulators, local air quality is becoming a very big deal - just ask everyone concerned with the Heathrow expansion debate.

Anyway, you can now arm yourself with the finest stats available in the field courtesy of the US Transportation Research Board's Airport Cooperative Research Program. They've just published the results of a heavyweight study of the phenonemon using several real aircraft with engines covering about 70% of the US fleet. Landmark stuff.

Here's a flavour of it, but there's much, much more...

The following conclusions were drawn when emissions were sampled at the exhaust nozzle:

- The measured PM parameters for each engine type (i.e., JT8D, CFM56, CF6, RB211, etc.)

are unique. For example, in the case of the RB211, JT8D, and PW4158, the mass-based

emission indices measured as a function of fuel flow ranged from 0.04 to 0.70, <0.01 to 0.32,

and <0.01 to 0.18 g/kg-fuel respectively.

- The measured PM parameters for engine subtypes are also unique. For example, for the

CFM56-3B versus -7B engines, the ratio of their mass-based emission indices at takeoff was

found to be 4:1 (-3B:-7B).

- Credible inventories based on nozzle emission rates will require engine-specific data like

that measured in these studies.

- Black carbon PM (i.e., non-volatile particles) constitutes more than 80% of the mass of PM

emissions at all thrust conditions. At takeoff thrusts, more than 95% of the total PM mass

is black carbon PM.

Today and tomorrow the participants in Europe's Green Regional Aircraft (GRA) programme are in Caserta, Italy to get the technical activity underway. Briefly, GRA is one of the six strands of the all-important Clean Sky research programme. That in turn is the pan-European research effort aimed at helping industry achieve the continent's environmental targets in aviation. GRA accounts for €174 million of Clean Sky's €1.6 billion over seven years.

Peter Bakker, who I've not met, is CEO of the integrated freight company TNT, and a very interesting man. He's close enough to aviation to know a great deal about it, but distant enough not to be too much in love with it. And he's just said something fairly remarkable.

TNT operates or controls more than 40 aircraft worldwide under the TNT Airways brand. Most of them are short/medium-haul frieghters for express deliveries. But the airline also has a couple of  Boeing 747-400ERFs for long-range services - notably Europe-China.

Business is good and the airline needs more long-haul aircraft, but Bakker says TNT has told Boeing he won't be acquiring more 747s.

My colleague Brendan Sobie talked to him at the Cargo Facts symposium in Miami about why - read below why Bakker thinks what he thinks.

Rather out of the blue, IATA, CANSO and Eurocontrol have come out with a heavyweight document that seriously sets about realising environmental gains by optimised air traffic management. It's a "five-point plan" that essentially lays out the things that will definitely have to be done in order to get the benefits that are generally accepted to be achievable.

We can only hope it's followed up with action. ATM - in both the US and Europe in fact - is the one bright hope for emissions reduction in the forseeable future.

In The Guardian today George Monbiot urges the world to investigate the possible use of hydrogen-powered airships for long-haul travel more closely.

There's no doubt it's an interesting area, but a lot of people have been pursuing various airship concepts for quite a while now - including the US Navy in quite a big way - and they haven't made a great deal of progress. Putting speed to one side, there really are some serious operational questions about making this practical.

On the other hand, it is the sort of technology that would benefit from some heavier weight research than it has so far had.

CNN has a lengthy (by their standards) piece on how airlines are focusing on weight saving in the cabin once again as fuel bills keep on going up. This one seems to come round every few years whenever costs bite, but then the wins slowly get chipped away in the intervening years. But this is one of those issues where what's good for the balance sheet is also good for the environment.

Not an easy browse, but the Australian Transport Statistics Yearbook 2007 has plenty of stats on emissions of all kinds for those of you sufficiently dedicated to your various causes. You're looking for Chapter 10 / p133 onwards. Put the kettle on first!

Glenn Alderton's Qantas DC-3 picture shows the proverbial more innocent age and is featured purely in the interests of lightening up this post!

IATA - the scheduled international airlines trade body - is going to help out an experimental programme to fly an aircraft around the world, through the day and night, using only solar power. The Swiss-based Solar Impulse team is due to fly the aircraft in the last quarter of this year and make the global voyage in 2011.