The impact of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) on Soot formation mechanisms.

In-light of recent research and publicity, directly linking increased mortality rates with soot emissions from the transport sector including aviation gas turbines - international regulators, through the ICAO, have recently set a new international non-volatile Particulate Matter (nvPM) standard for civil aviation Gas Turbine Engines.

Towards understanding the likely impact of widespread adoption of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) on local air quality, this experimentally based collaborative (Engineering & Chemistry) project will determine the mechanisms by which soot (non-volatile and volatile PM) are formed within high pressure combustion systems. Conventional, drop-in and Sustainable Aviation Fuels will be characterised in terms of their physical and chemical properties, using the novel application of fuel and soot analysis techniques (e.g. NMR, XPS-Sp2) to assess the soot formation mechanism. This assessment will provide confidence that 'fuels of the future' offer a lower impact to the local air quality surrounding airports in terms of both regulated (nvPM) and currently unregulated volatile Particulate Matter (vPM), hence ensuring an improvement in health for the local demographic along with the perceived benefits of Carbon reduction.

Using the knowledge gained in achieving the above aims a second angle of this project will be understanding how laboratory scale combustors maybe used to create soot with similar morphology to real-life aircraft emissions - with the aim of generating aerosols suitable for in-vitro health study and calibration of regulatory nvPM analysers.