Sustainable Microalgae-Membrane Photobioreactor System for Onboard Oxygen Production in an Aircraft

2024-26-0402

06/01/2024

Features
Event
AeroCON 2024
Authors Abstract
Content
The purpose of the Air Generation System is to provide a constant supply of conditioned fresh air to meet the necessary oxygen availability and to prevent CO2 concentrations for the occupants in an aircraft. The engine bleed energy or electrical load energy consumed towards this circumstance accounts to be approximately 5% of total fuel burn and in turn, contributes to the global emissions of greenhouse gases.
This paper studies the improvement areas of the present conventional system such as fuel burn consumption associated with an aircraft ECS depending on the amount of bleed, ram air usage and electric power consumption. Improved systems for sustainability and hybridization in environmental control systems are desirable in aircraft.
This paper explains how a new design of the sustainable hybrid module assists the conventional system, by using a proposed modular MPBR. The MPBR system generates oxygen-enriched air, which is mixed with the traditional fresh air generated from conventional air generation systems.
MPBR system revitalizes the existing air and establishes more air recirculation when compared to a conventional system. It will reduce the demand for fresh air from the engine bleed in case of engine bleed aircraft or reduce the electrical load in case of more electric aircraft, which hereby improves engine efficiency.
The proposed system can also be used for redundant life support purposes during an emergency.
VOCs related to fuel consumption, maintenance, and global emissions of greenhouse gases can be addressed with the proposed solution. It applies to most of the aircraft variants and enhances sustainability, hybridization, reliability, and cost-effective features which would be of value and interest in a business case for the Suppliers, Manufacturers, and Customers side.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/2024-26-0402
Pages
9
Citation
Subrahmanya, S., Kumar, N., Ranjan, J., and Kotnadh, S., "Sustainable Microalgae-Membrane Photobioreactor System for Onboard Oxygen Production in an Aircraft," SAE Technical Paper 2024-26-0402, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4271/2024-26-0402.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Jun 01
Product Code
2024-26-0402
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English