A Trade-off Study of a Bleedless and Conventional Air Conditioning Systems

The objective of this work is to perform a trade-off study between aircraft air conditioning systems based on conventional technology (Engine Pneumatic Bleed based) and the proposed bleedless architecture, based on the MEA (More Electric Aircraft) and Bleedless Engines concept. The pneumatic bleed system components are thus eliminated and a dedicated compressor serves as the main power supply to the air conditioning and pressurization system. Both the conventional and the proposed ECS architecture are described and the system main parameters are calculated. The aircraft used as baseline for the study is a typical regional jet. The operational characteristics and aspects of costs, weight, energy efficiency, maintainability and impacts on other systems of the aircraft were also considered. The proposed air conditioning architecture is compared to a conventional one in terms of weight, system price and power and fuel consumptions. This work is merely academic and conceptual and does not involve any existing or in development aircraft data from any aircraft manufacturer.