Characterization of the Ultrafine and Black Carbon Emissions from Different Aviation Alternative Fuels

This study reports gaseous and particle (ultrafine and black carbon (BC)) emissions from a turbofan engine core on standard Jet A-1 and three alternative fuels, including 100% hydrothermolysis synthetic kerosene with aromatics (CH-SKA), 50% Hydro-processed Esters and Fatty Acid paraffinic kerosene (HEFA-SPK), and 100% Fischer Tropsch (FT-SPK). Gaseous emissions from this engine for various fuels were similar but significant differences in particle emissions were observed. During the idle condition, it was observed that the non-refractory mass fraction in the emitted particles were higher than during higher engine load condition. This observation is consistent for all test fuels. The 100% CH-SKA fuel was found to have noticeable reductions in BC emissions when compared to Jet A-1 by 28-38% by different BC instruments (and 7% in refractory particle number (PN) emissions) at take-off condition. BC emissions from this fuel were lower than from Jet A-1 by 45-50% (and 25-26% in refractory PN) at idle or cruise condition. The 100% CH-SKA fuel was observed to have a minimum influence on non-refractory PN emissions. A lower volume in naphthalene in the 100% CH-SKA fuel was hypothesized to be one of the factors attributing to the reduced BC emissions when compared to Jet A-1 emissions. For the 50% HEFA-SPK fuel, BC emissions were lower than the BC emissions from Jet A-1 by 58-86% for various engine load conditions. BC emissions from the 100% FT-SPK fuel were lower than from the Jet A-1 by 70-98%. Both the refractory and non-refractory PN emissions from these fuels were lower by comparable magnitude when compared to that from Jet A-1.