CCPortal
Sustainable fuel blends could help airlines clean up their act  科技资讯
时间:2021-06-18   来源:[美国] Physorg

Sustainable fuel blends could help airlines clean up their act

airplane
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Sustainable fuel blends used by aircraft may help reduce the impact of aviation on climate warming by producing less contrail cloud, concludes a study published in Communications Earth & Environment. The findings suggest that contrails from aircraft burning sustainable fuel blends could contain 50 to 70% less soot and ice particles compared to conventional fuels.

Aircraft contrails contribute to climate warming by trapping infrared radiation from the Earth's surface in the atmosphere. Climate warming by contrails is thought to be larger than the contribution from aircraft carbon dioxide and nitric oxide emissions. Incomplete combustion of fuel compounds in creates large amounts of soot particles onto which water vapor can condense and eventually freeze into , forming contrails. This is especially the case for conventional fuels that contain , known precursors of soot.

Christiane Voigt and colleagues measured soot and ice crystals in the contrails behind an Airbus A320 aircraft using one of five different fuel blends, which ranged from conventional aircraft fuel to sustainable fuels that are low in aromatic compounds. The authors found that contrails produced when the aircraft was burning sustainable fuel blends contained less soot and fewer, but larger, ice crystals, and that these contrails warmed the atmosphere less.

A second, independent study by Bernd Kärcher and colleagues, also published in Communications Earth & Environment, used mathematical simulations to show that a previously discovered climate cooling effect by which aircraft soot particles interact with existing -induced clouds to reflect sunlight back into space may be smaller than thought. Taken together, the results from both studies suggest that more widespread use of fuels low in aromatic compounds could help reduce the climate impact of aviation by reducing its overall warming effects.


Explore further

Small altitude changes could cut contrail impact of flights by up to 59 percent

More information: Christiane Voigt et al, Cleaner burning aviation fuels can reduce contrail cloudiness, Communications Earth & Environment (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-021-00174-y

Bernd Kärcher et al, Process-oriented analysis of aircraft soot-cirrus interactions constrains the climate impact of aviation, Communications Earth & Environment (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-021-00175-x

Citation: Sustainable fuel blends could help airlines clean up their act (2021, June 18) retrieved 18 June 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2021-06-sustainable-fuel-blends-airlines.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
     原文来源:https://phys.org/news/2021-06-sustainable-fuel-blends-airlines.html

除非特别说明,本系统中所有内容都受版权保护,并保留所有权利。