On-site direct imaging of carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft during landing and take-off cycle

Abstract

To achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, aviation sector is urgently and severely required to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Herein, for the first time, on-site direct and selective imaging of CO2 emissions from aircraft was performed at Fukuoka International Airport in Japan, using the latest infrared camera with a remarkably narrow bandpass filter ranging from 4.2 to 4.4 μm, corresponding to the low-transmittance wavelength of CO2. The high resolutions of the time-series images are 100 mm/pixel in space and 50 ms in time, well capturing the dynamics of jet engine plumes containing the core and bypass flows. Throughout a landing and take-off cycle of a wide-body aircraft, including Boeing 787, Boeing 777, and Airbus A350, CO2 emissions are successfully imaged, clearly demonstrating that the dense CO2 flow in the core jet through the embedded high bypass ratio engines strongly mixes with the bypass jet and ambient air, eventually diffusing downstream. As a result, the applicability of the new real-time monitoring technique was evidenced for the dense CO2 distributions in space including emission sources.

Keywords

• Aviation
• Jet engine
• CO2
• Monitoring
• Emission source
• Infrared camera