Abstract
Driven by concerns regarding the sustainability of aviation and the continued growth of air traffic, increasing interest is given to emerging aircraft technologies. Although new technologies, such as battery-electric propulsion systems, have the potential to minimise in-flight emissions and noise, environmental burdens are possibly shifted to other stages of the aircraft’s life cycle, and new socio-economic challenges may arise. Therefore, a life-cycle-oriented sustainability assessment is required to identify these hotspots and problem shifts and to derive recommendations for action for aircraft development at an early stage. This paper proposes a framework for the modelling and assessment of future aircraft technologies and provides an overview of the challenges and available methods and tools in this field. A structured search and screening process is used to determine which aspects of the proposed framework are already addressed in the scientific literature and in which areas research is still needed. For this purpose, a total of 66 related articles are identified and systematically analysed. Firstly, an overview of statistics of papers dealing with life-cycle-oriented analysis of conventional and emerging aircraft propulsion systems is given, classifying them according to the technologies considered, the sustainability dimensions and indicators investigated, and the assessment methods applied. Secondly, a detailed analysis of the articles is conducted to derive answers to the defined research questions. It illustrates that the assessment of environmental aspects of alternative fuels is a dominating research theme, while novel approaches that integrate socio-economic aspects and broaden the scope to battery-powered, fuel-cell-based, or hybrid-electric aircraft are emerging. It also provides insights by what extent future aviation technologies can contribute to more sustainable and energy-efficient aviation. The findings underline the need to harmonise existing methods into an integrated modelling and assessment approach that considers the specifics of upcoming technological developments in aviation.
Highlights
The contribution of the aviation sector towards climate change has increasingly gained attention over the past years, given the continued growth in passenger air traffic and transportation of goods
Considering an A319-100 aircraft type at a flight range of 3360 km, while kerosene is associated with 0.01 kg of life cycle CO2 equivalent per kilometre travelled, hydrogen produced from renewable energy sources (RES) presents 0.005 kg CO2 eq./km, and performs significantly better than natural gas
Even though this study presents the attractiveness of hydrogen for aviation, it emphasises the relevance of the hydrogen production path on the associated environmental impacts
Summary
The contribution of the aviation sector towards climate change has increasingly gained attention over the past years, given the continued growth in passenger air traffic and transportation of goods. The aviation sector accounts for around 2.5% of the global energy-related CO2 emissions [1] and is responsible for a variety of non-carbon related emissions contributing to the radiative forcing (RF) of the climate system [2]. Despite the continuous improvements in aircraft technology, fuel efficiency, and more efficient operational procedures, total aviation emissions are increasing due to the fast growth in global air traffic demand [3,4]. In contrast to road transportation, the long lifetime of aircraft (20–30 years) implies doubling or tripling of aviation-induced CO2 emissions until 2050 unless radical changes are made [6]. The aviation sector is criticised for various other impacts, such as noise emissions, especially in the vicinity of airports [7]
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