Farnborough 2008 Show News - July 15, 2008 - (Page 72) CLEAN FA R N B O R O U G H 2 0 0 8 AND GREEN Path to Biofuels: Long, Difficult, and Expensive The road ahead toward using biofuels for aviation will be long, difficult—and expensive, says Dr. Alan H. Epstein, vp for technology and environment at Pratt & Whitney. There is far more to it, he says, than filling an airplane’s tank and showing that an engine can run on it. Even finding enough biofuel to conduct a test is a challenge. “There isn’t enough of it in the world today to fill a 747,” he told Show News. Of course that situation would change when it is produced in commercial quantities, but that begs the question of the chicken and the egg—who will invest billions of dollars building plants to produce an aviation fuel before it is certified by the aviation authorities? On the other hand, how much is the aerospace industry prepared to “An aviation biofuel must be compatible not only with jet fuel, but also with all other fuels such as diesel and heating oil that are widely distributed in shared pipelines. Otherwise, you will need a new infrastructure to deliver them.” —Alan H. Epstein, vp for technology and environment at Pratt & Whitney. spend on certifying experimental fuels that might never become commercially available? While engineers claim with some justification that a jet engine will burn anything, the fuel must be proven safe in the harshest conditions and extremes of temperature. In short, biofuel must meet certain standards for aviation to ensure that a known quality is consistently available worldwide. Those standards remain to be determined, he said. “For example, there is an electrical conductivity requireFundamentally more efficient ment for fuel—and most engines might commercial airplanes use make more sense. capacitive fuel gauging. So if a Pratt’s Geared biofuel has a different conTurbofan is seen here on its first ductivity, it may burn perfectly flight this past well, but your fuel gauges Friday. won’t be accurate.” Just as jet fuel varies in its chemical composition depending on whether it was made from Saudi or West Texas crude, so biofuels will differ depending on their source. But how much variance is acceptable? “An aviation biofuel must be compatible not only with jet fuel, but also with all other fuels such as diesel and heating oil that are widely distributed in shared pipelines. Otherwise, you will need a new infrastructure to deliver them,” Epstein said. Very few energy companies have the capital to build huge plants with capacity of 30-50,000 barrels; plants one tenth the size may be more economical when it comes to gathering the biomass raw materials they need, and they might be able to attract investors. “But startups must change their ways. They cannot continue to say ‘we have this great fuel, we are not going to give you any and we are not going to tell you what is in it, but we want you to certify it.’ ” Aviation should be in the position that once a fuel does exist, it can be very quickly certified, Epstein believes. “Perhaps more importantly we should have very careful specifications laid out, much more so than now, so that if somebody makes the fuel to these specifications, they have a reasonably high confidence that it is certifiable,” he said. Industry must work to remove obstacles that could drive biofuel companies toward producing for road transportation instead of aviation, he added. —John Morris AgustaWestland Is a Co-Leader of Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative AgustaWestland is taking a lead role in green initiatives as co-leader of the European Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative while also investing its own research and development money in a range of new technologies. The efforts include work to reduce external noise signatures and fuel consumption and to investigate “green” flight paths. Overall company goals include a 50% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions through reduced fuel burn, an 80% reduction in nitrous oxides emissions and a 50% reduction in external noise. The efforts will converge to support a next generation of vertical lift aircraft for introduction to service after 2015 as well as some retrofit opportunities. BAE Goes Greener with Battery GEMs BAE Systems is moving customers and staff around the show using a fleet of E4 model battery electric vehicles from Global Electric Motorcars, a unit of Chrysler that builds the diminutive cars in Fargo, North Dakota. The vehicles are classified as neighborhood electric vehicles, or NEVs, meaning that their speed is governed at 25 mph. The GEMs here were supplied by GEM’s British affiliate: www.gemcars.co.uk 72 July 15, 2008 www.aviationweek.com/shownews http://www.gemcars.co.uk http://www.aviationweek.com/shownews
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