Analysis of environmentally friendly commercial aviation development ways

Abstract

The goal of this study is to identify effective directions to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions of commercial aviation. The subject matter of this research is to analyze ways known from literature to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions of commercial aviation: continued evolution (which includes a lot of various methods for partial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions with decreasing in fuel consumption), «net zero» (which includes the following methods: offsets and sustainable aviation fuel utilization), electric hybrid power plants (parallel, series, series/parallel, turboelectric, and partial turboelectric), «zero carbon» (replacing kerosene combustion with hydrogen combustion in modified gas-turbine engines), «true zero» (transition to electric cruise motors with hydrogen fuel cells or electric batteries). The tasks to be solved are as follows: learning of the ways and detection of advantages and problems from the point of view of efficiency, technical complexity, economy, ecology, and implementation possibility in conditions of limited funding. The methods used are: search of the corresponding information sources in the Internet and their analysis on the basis of operational experience in the aviation branch. The following results were obtained: in terms of found information sources, data about existing greenhouse gas emissions and their predictive estimations, history of international agreement development as for greenhouse gas emission reduction were briefly stated; actuality of this problem with a view to mitigate the environmental impact was stressed; and the advantages and problems, which should be solved to implement each of the considered ways, were summarized. Conclusions. The scientific novelty of the results obtained is as follows: 1) information from numerous sources of literature that clarifies classification, the advantages, and the problems that should be overcome for each ways implementation, was summed up in the review article; 2) additional inherent disadvantages, which are integral to some of the ways (low efficiency, high technical complexity, schedule delays, cost overruns, funding instability, doubts in their reasonability from ecological considerations), are shown as a result of analysis and historical analogy. The direction of the following research in this field is outlined.

Keywords

• greenhouse gas emissions
• gas-turbine engine
• emission reduction ways
• sustainable aviation fuels
• hybrid electric power plants
• hydrogen aviation
• fuel cells