Jose Luz Silveira
Sao Paulo State University
Brazil
Title: Experimental study of ethanol use in airplane engines
Biography
Biography: Jose Luz Silveira
Abstract
This work evaluates and quantifies the environmental impact from the use of aviation gasoline blended with ethanol in aeronautical internal combustion engines. For this a Lycoming IO-540-K1D5 engine has been used, working with different blends in order to measure performance characteristics and pollutant emissions of the system. The ecological efficiency concept is applied to evaluate the environmental impact by CO2, SO2, NOx and particulate material (PM) emissions considering the influence of fuel conversion efficiency and different flight conditions. The tested flight conditions were takeoff and cruise at 10,000 ft. Considering the measured thermal efficiency in each case, on the takeoff condition, the engine presents an ecological efficiency of 0.858 for gasoline and 0.914 for ethanol, and on the cruise condition, the engine presents an ecological efficiency of 0.842 for gasoline and 0.924 for ethanol.