Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Internation Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

CORSIA: The first internationally adopted approach to calculate life-cycle GHG emissions for aviation fuels

The aviation sector has grown at a significant pace in recent years, and despite improvements in aircraft efficiency, the sector's impact on climate change is a growing concern. To address this concern, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) established the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) to help reduce aviation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper presents a methodology agreed by the 193 ICAO member states to evaluate the life-cycle GHG emissions of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), in the CORSIA system. The core life-cycle assessment and induced land use change values of SAFs are presented to determine the GHG savings of certified pathways. The paper aims to present that a number of SAFs can yield significant life-cycle emission reductions compared to petroleum-derived jet fuel. This implies the potentially major role of SAFs in reducing aviation's carbon footprint.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Estimating induced land use change emissions for sustainable aviation biofuel pathways

Sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) are expected to play an essential role in achieving the aviation industries’ goal of carbon-neutral growth. However, producing biomass-based SAFs may induce changes in global land use and the associated carbon stock. The induced land use change (ILUC) emissions, as a part of the full life-cycle emissions for SAF pathways, will affect whether and to what extent SAFs reduce emissions compared with petroleum-based jet fuels. Here, we estimate the ILUC emission intensity for seventeen SAF pathways considered by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), covering five ASTM-certified technologies, nine biomass-based feedstocks, and four geographical regions. We introduce the SAF pathways into a well-established computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, GTAP-BIO, and its coupled emission accounting model, AEZ-EF, to study economy-wide implications of SAF production and estimate ILUC emissions intensity for each pathway. The estimated SAF ILUC emission intensities, using a 25-year amortization period, range from -58.5 g CO 2 e MJ -1 for the USA miscanthus alcohol (isobutanol)-to-jet (ATJ) pathway to 34.6 g CO 2 e MJ -1 for the Malaysia & Indonesia palm oil Hydrotreated Esters of Fatty Acids (HEFA) pathway. Notably, the vegetable oil pathways tend to have higher ILUC emission intensities due to their linkage to palm expansion and peatland oxidation in Southeast Asia. The cellulosic pathways studied provide negative ILUC emissions, mainly driven by the high carbon sequestrations in crop biomass and soil. Using the core life-cycle emissions established by ICAO, we show that fifteen of the assessed pathways have a lower full life-cycle emission intensity than petroleum-based jet fuels (89 g CO 2 e MJ -1 ), offering promising options to reduce aviation emissions.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

Opening pathways for the conversion of woody biomass into sustainable aviation fuel via catalytic fast pyrolysis and hydrotreating

Meeting aggressive decarbonization targets set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will require the rapid development of technologies to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) can support these efforts by opening pathways for the conversion of woody biomass into an upgraded biogenic oil that can be further processed to SAF and other fuels. However, the absence of end-to-end experimental data for the process leads to uncertainty in the yield, product quality, costs, and sustainability of the pathway. The research presented here serves to address these needs through a series of integrated experimental campaigns in which real biomass feedstocks are converted to a final SAF product using large bench-scale continuous reactor systems. For these campaigns, the degree of catalytic upgrading during CFP was varied to produce CFP-oils with oxygen contents of 17 and 20 wt% on a dry basis. The CFP-oils were then hydrotreated and distilled into gasoline, diesel, and SAF fractions. Detailed yield and compositional data were obtained for each step of the process to inform technoeconomic and lifecycle analyses, and the fuel properties of the SAF fraction were evaluated to provide first-of-its-kind insight into the quality of the final product. This research reveals opportunities to optimize process carbon efficiency by tuning the degree of catalytic upgrading during the CFP step and highlights routes to produce a high-quality cycloalkane-rich SAF with 85–92% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil-based pathways.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗