Sustainable Aviation: Electrification and Hydrogen Technologies in Airports [Slides]
Overview of sustainable aviation landscape and NREL's research roadmap for presentation to National Academy of Sciences.
08 HYDROGEN↗
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Near-Term Electricity Requirement and Emission Implications for Sustainable Aviation Fuel Production with CO 2 -to-Fuels Technologies
Aviation contributed approximately 10% of the U.S. transportation sector's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and about 3% of the nation's total GHG production before the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic (EPA 2022). Unlike the ground transportation sector, which can be decarbonized by using batteries and hydrogen fuel cell powertrain technologies, the technical and economic challenges of aviation electrification open the opportunity for CO 2 utilization (CO2U) using clean power sources. The U.S. government set a goal to produce 3 billion gallons per year of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) by 2030 and scale up the production to 35 billion gallons per year by 2050 (Bioenergy Technologies Office 2022). In this report, we examine three potential locations, in California, Iowa, and Louisiana, for SAF production using two production pathways that are expected to be available by 2030. We analyze the electricity cost to satisfy 10% of the SAF production potential for the select locations. Specifically, we consider (1) retail electricity cost from the default local utility in each location; (2) physical power purchase agreement (PPA) for renewable power and battery storage hybrid systems with preset prices; (3) financial PPA from a dedicated renewable plant; and (4) estimated real-time pricing (RTP) from the wholesale power market with utility delivery adders. Retail rates are available for the three potential locations; however, the developer should negotiate with the local utility in Iowa for new tariff riders, because the load of the proposed SAF plant (1.4 GW) is significantly higher than the current industrial tariff structure requirement (200 kW). The developers are not able to claim federal credits (i.e., the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022) when sourcing electricity from local utilities. Developers could consider prioritizing physical and financial PPAs as purchase options. While physical PPAs can be imported out of state, this structure imposes availability issues as developers must locate in the same electricity grid regions. Financial PPAs do not have the same location restrictions and provide the same cost savings as physical PPAs, but financial PPAs impose financial risks in the event of system curtailment and grid interruption. RTPs are available for customers in California with flexible load and hourly load management capability; however, utilities in our studied regions in Louisiana and Iowa only offer time-of-use and curtailment programs to incentivize lower energy usage in peak hours. These utilities do not currently offer RTP programs, and the developer may need to have further negotiations with the local utilities to access RTP programs. The results show that purchased electricity prices may range from 2.6 cents/kWh to 7.1 cents/kWh for the three studied plants.
02 PETROLEUM↗
2024 Sustainable Aviation Energy Conference: 5 Key Messages From the Accelerating Aerospace Technology Deployment Workshop
At the 2024 Sustainable Aviation Energy Conference, more than 100 aviation leaders gathered in Dallas, Texas, to discuss collaboration and research needed to clear the path to widespread adoption of sustainable aviation technologies. During open workshops, participants from state and federal agencies; airports; aircraft and engine manufacturers; liquid fuel producers; and other stakeholder groups brainstormed the biggest barriers and opportunities for realizing a sustainable aviation ecosystem. This fact sheets presents five key messages and discussion points that emerged during a workshop on accelerating aerospace technology deployment.
advanced air mobility↗
2024 Sustainable Aviation Energy Conference: 5 Key Messages From the Alternative Fueling (Energy) Infrastructure Workshop
At the 2024 Sustainable Aviation Energy Conference, more than 100 aviation leaders gathered in Dallas, Texas, to discuss collaboration and research needed to clear the path to widespread adoption of sustainable aviation technologies. During open workshops, participants from state and federal agencies; airports; aircraft and engine manufacturers; liquid fuel producers; and other stakeholder groups brainstormed the biggest barriers and opportunities for realizing a sustainable aviation ecosystem. This fact sheets presents five key messages and discussion points that emerged during a workshop on alternative fueling (energy) infrastructure.
advanced air mobility↗
2024 Sustainable Aviation Energy Conference: 5 Key Messages From the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Workshop
At the 2024 Sustainable Aviation Energy Conference, more than 100 aviation leaders gathered in Dallas, Texas, to discuss collaboration and research needed to clear the path to widespread adoption of sustainable aviation technologies. During open workshops, participants from state and federal agencies; airports; aircraft and engine manufacturers; liquid fuel producers; and other stakeholder groups brainstormed the biggest barriers and opportunities for realizing a sustainable aviation ecosystem. This fact sheets presents five key messages and discussion points that emerged during a workshop on sustainable aviation fuel.
advanced air mobility↗
2024 Sustainable Aviation Energy Conference: 5 Key Messages From the Airport Enabling Efforts Workshop
At the 2024 Sustainable Aviation Energy Conference, more than 100 aviation leaders gathered in Dallas, Texas, to discuss collaboration and research needed to clear the path to widespread adoption of sustainable aviation technologies. During open workshops, participants from state and federal agencies; airports; aircraft and engine manufacturers; liquid fuel producers; and other stakeholder groups brainstormed the biggest barriers and opportunities for realizing a sustainable aviation ecosystem. This fact sheets presents five key messages and discussion points that emerged during a workshop on airport enabling efforts.
advanced air mobility↗
Ampaire ARPA-e Electric Flight Testbed
A hybrid-electric aircraft flying testbed was developed in this program with the intent to serve as a dedicated, enduring testbed to test and evaluate ARPA-e CIRCUITS Program and other electrified aviation technologies in relevant flight environments. This testbed enabled rapid development cycles of novel and innovative technologies in the electrified aviation space, maturing them from a research lab environment to flying in an aircraft. By providing research groups with the means to test their transformative technologies in a real-world, aircraft environment, the path to validating the safety and reliability of their technologies for future commercial opportunities was greatly accelerated. Three core technologies were integrated and tested: an inverter/motor drive built by the University of Arkansas, a solid-state circuit breaker (iBreaker) built by the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a Flying Capacitor Multi-level (FCML) DC/DC converter built by the University of California, Berkeley. In each of these cases, the requirements established for safety of flight resulted in a holistic approach to the designs, evoking a deeper understanding of the potential failure modes and mitigations necessary to build a robust and flightworthy system. Further, the integration into a hybrid-electric aircraft de-risked the potential electrical and mechanical issues that cannot easily be experienced or replicated in a lab environment. The experiments were also required to undergo representative temperature, shock, and vibration testing as the FAA prescribes for this category of aircraft, facilitating familiarity with the relevant design and test guidelines necessary to commercialize the technologies. This testbed unlocks the massive potential of core power electronics technologies necessary for a safe, robust, and efficient electric aviation future. With quick iterative design, test, and flight cycles, these core technologies are on a quicker path to technology readiness level maturity and commercialization, enabling a more sustainable future for the aviation industry.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
De-Risking Megawatt-Scale Charging
Part of Session 9 of the 2025 Airport Energy Management Symposium: Energy Technology Futures - When Technology is Changing Faster than Planning, How Do You Prepare? This session will look at the current state of novel technologies and how airports might prepare to just the right amount to be prepared for the uncertainties. This presentation will focus on de-risking megawatt-scale charging for airport and aviation applications.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Fleet-Level Fuel Impact of Hybrid-Electric Aircraft in United States
Here, this paper examines the impact of two potential solutions for increasing fuel efficiency and reducing emissions in commercial aviation: hybrid-electric propulsion and the use of drop-in synthetic aviation fuels (SAFs). The authors modeled three representative aircraft employed in the U.S. domestic market: a 70-seat regional turboprop, a 100-seat airliner, and a 180-seat airliner. These aircraft were retrofitted with hybrid-electric propulsion systems that integrate batteries and electric motors to provide additional torque to the propeller or fan. The authors explored various technological scenarios involving different battery specific energies, electric motor specific powers, and other relevant parameters. Flight performance models were used to analyze the range–payload capabilities of these new hybrid-electric aircraft and to compare them with their conventional counterparts. Subsequently, the authors virtually deployed the hybrid-electric aircraft on 2019 U.S. domestic commercial flights to assess the types and lengths of flights that could be serviced by this new fleet. We then compared the resulting fuel consumption, energy use, and emissions with those of a conventional fleet using a combination of jet fuel and SAF.
SAF↗
Sizing Power Components of an Electrically Driven Tail Cone Thruster and a Range Extender
The aeronautics industry has been challenged on many fronts to increase efficiency, reduce emissions, and decrease dependency on carbon-based fuels. The NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate has identified a suite of investments to meet long term research demands beyond the purview of commercial investment. Electrification of aviation propulsion through turboelectric or hybrid electric propulsion is one of many exciting research areas which has the potential to revolutionize the aviation industry. This paper will provide an overview of the turboelectric and hybrid electric technologies being developed under NASAs Advanced Air Transportation Technology (AATT) Project, and how these technologies can impact vehicle design. An overview will be presented of vehicle system studies and the electric drive system assumptions for successful turboelectric and hybrid electric propulsion in single aisle size commercial aircraft. Key performance parameters for electric drive system technologies will be reviewed, and the technical investment made in materials, electric machines, power electronics, and integrated power systems will be discussed. Finally, power components for a single aisle turboelectric aircraft with an electrically driven tail cone thruster and a hybrid electric nine passenger aircraft with a range extender will be parametrically sized.
turbogenerator↗
Unlocking Synergistic Benefits of Colocation of Data Centers at Airports
This white paper evaluates the potential of a new energy system configuration: Strategic colocation of data centers - on airport property or adjacent to airports - in order to realize significant operational, economic, and environmental benefits to airports, data centers, and the communities they serve. While increasing demand from both airports and data centers requires both parties to make significant infrastructure investments, colocation can mitigate some of the energy, land use, permitting, and connectivity challenges of siting and powering these industries.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Addressing Electric Aviation Infrastructure Cybersecurity Implementation
This technical report evaluates key considerations of cybersecurity systems in preparation for the electrification of both legacy and new aviation services. The objectives are to consider the landscape of components and interconnections, review sensitivities and the criticality of data and operations, and aim to understand the applicability of existing best practices or the need for new ones associated with the cybersecurity of electric charging systems for the aviation sector. Given the early stages of electric aviation deployment, developers have the opportunity to plan and integrate cybersecurity strategies into the complete electric aviation system during the initial stages of design and procurement and will benefit from employing a framework for continuous cybersecurity monitoring. This paper presents initial considerations of key cybersecurity strategies and their application to forthcoming electric aviation systems.
airports↗
Development of a Techno-Economic Analysis Framework for a Solar Thermochemical Fuel Production Process
Synthetic liquid fuels can provide a drop-in substitute for fossil-based fuels in sectors such as aviation and maritime, where electrification is not a viable option due to the need for high specific energy density. However, for these alternative fuels to be adopted at a commercial scale, their price must be competitive compared to their fossil-based counterparts. The reverse water-gas shift (RWGS) reaction offers a promising pathway, using hydrogen (sourced from electrolysis) and carbon dioxide as the feed and reacting to produce syngas - a mixture of H2 and CO at a specific ratio. Syngas is a useful precursor that can be converted into fuels and chemicals via known downstream processes, such as liquid transportation fuels via Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis. The RWGS reaction is currently not applied in commercial scale, unlike the rest of the components in the process chain (electrolyzers and syngas-to-fuel synthesis units). The RWGS reaction poses several challenges due to its restrictive thermodynamics. Being an equimolar reaction, high temperatures and a large excess of H2 are needed to achieve reasonable CO2 conversion at equilibrium. This has detrimental effects on practical process implementation and the quality of syngas that can be produced, with direct effect on the energy and capital requirements, as well as the need for expensive downstream separation. In this work, we are proposing to develop a new concentrating solar thermal (CST) compatible RWGS reactor, performing the reaction in a 2-step chemical looping process using metal oxide at a temperature range of 600-800 degrees Celsius. By decoupling the reactor from the solar receiver, the Generation 3 (Gen3) CST technology could be utilized, together with its proposed thermal energy storage (TES) technology, benefitting from a good match to the required temperatures. CST technology is a viable option for supplying the heat that could be rapidly deployed in scale, thus being a good match to the gas-to-liquid (GTL) process which requires a large minimal scale to be commercially viable. The integration of TES with CST also allows operating the plant at large annual capacity factors and avoids multiple shutdown/startup cycles, thus fitting into the steady-state operation mode that most GTL processes require. The main innovation in the proposed design hinges on a countercurrent reaction design using a packed bed reactor. In 2019 Metcalfe et al. showed the benefits of countercurrent species exchange could be realized in a redox chemical-looping processes, by storing the favorable countercurrent chemical potential profiles in a packed bed of non-stoichiometric oxide. Metcalfe et al. applied this breakthrough concept to the WGS reaction, which is conventionally a co-feed catalytic process, showing a dramatic improvement. Bulfin et al. (2023) performed a similar proof-of-concept demonstration for the RWGS reaction using CeO2, achieving cumulative and peak CO2 conversions of 88% and 95%, respectively, compared to a thermodynamic limit of 58% for the co-feed catalytic process at the same conditions. In our new REGENLOOP project, we are developing a reactor prototype from the heat-exchange packed bed reactor-type, a commonly used reactor in the chemical industry. The endothermic heat of reduction will be supplied to the reactor using CST, while the same heat transfer fluid (HTF) mechanism will be used to extract the exothermic heat of oxidation. An array of multiple reactors is used to supply constant high-purity CO stream, that is then mixed with H2 from electrolysis to produce a high-purity syngas at the required composition. By removing the CO-CO2 separation after the RWGS process, significant energy and cost reduction can be achieved. A physics-based TEA framework is currently being developed, covering all the major plant processes, from the solar collection through storage, chemical looping RWGS, GTL, and auxiliary unit operations, up to the liquid hydrocarbon product. This modeling framework will utilize reduced-order models for the chemical looping RWGS and TES, CST modeling using SolarPILOT, and Aspen Plus for the GTL. By using this combined physics-based approach, the effects of design/operating parameters on the performance and cost can be elucidated. In our presentation, the modeling framework will be presented in detail, including preliminary cost predictions of using this plant configuration under a few selected relevant case studies. This study will be used to identify the major cost drivers, informing further system design and optimization needed to chart the way for a commercially viable pathway.
14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
Colorado Alternatively Powered Aircraft Airport Infrastructure Study
Advanced Air Mobility encompasses emerging technologies in propulsion of general aviation and commuter aircraft for the purpose of moving passengers and goods. The State of Colorado has a strong aerospace and aviation legacy, and this research explores the potential energy implications of a transition from traditional aircraft propulsion systems to more-electric, full electric and hydrogen powered aircraft in flight schools, and small community air service utilizing NASA's Regional Air Mobility Model. Effort includes identifying potential energy needs and cost-effective solutions to support those emerging needs analyzing potential benefits on on-site generation and storage to optimize energy systems.Advanced Air Mobility encompasses emerging technologies in propulsion of general aviation and commuter aircraft for the purpose of moving passengers and goods. The State of Colorado has a strong aerospace and aviation legacy, and this research explores the potential energy implications of a transition from traditional aircraft propulsion systems to more-electric, full electric and hydrogen powered aircraft in flight schools, and small community air service utilizing NASA's Regional Air Mobility Model. Effort includes identifying potential energy needs and cost-effective solutions to support those emerging needs analyzing potential benefits on on-site generation and storage to optimize energy systems.
33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
Airport Ground Support Equipment Infrastructure & Logistics Electrification Assessment Tool: 2025 Data Development, Modeling and Analysis for DFW
The aviation industry is increasingly turning to modernize freight facilities by integrating electric Ground Support Equipment (eGSE) to enhance operational efficiency of freight facility moving vehicles and equipment. Airports worldwide are adopting eGSE to streamline cargo movement, reduce fuel and maintenance costs, and improve logistics coordination.1 North America, with its advanced aviation infrastructure, leads this transition, leveraging Internet of things (IoT)-enabled automation and zero emission technologies to boost reliability and reduce human errors.2 Electrification of freight facility moving vehicles and equipment boosts turnaround times, improves equipment reliability, and optimizes logistics coordination, giving operators a competitive advantage. With rising fuel price volatility and the pressure to meet stringent performance benchmarks, airports are focusing on cost-effective, scalable solutions for long-term financial and operational gains. To further accelerate electrification, airports are integrating Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) into rental car fleets and deploying electric baggage carts, requiring strategic investments in charging infrastructure. 3 The shift, however, presents challenges, such as limited technical expertise, high capital costs, and complex procurement processes. By forging strategic partnerships, leveraging advanced technologies, and optimizing infrastructure investments, airports can create a resilient, future-ready ecosystem that enhances the movement of people and goods through electrification-driven efficiency. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO), this electrification effort provides a scalable, cost-effective solution to improve airport freight operations. Through targeted investments and innovation, airports enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and meet performance benchmarks while advancing toward a resilient, electrified future.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
Multi-objective optimization of sustainable aviation fuel production pathways in the U.S. Corn Belt
As a potential source of low-carbon transportation energy, biofuels offer certain advantages over vehicle electrification (e.g., lower societal vulnerability to grid failures, and improved range of sustainable aviation), but also several challenges, including cost, carbon intensity, and land usage. There are also well-founded concerns that biofuel supply chains could be disrupted if extreme weather events impact feedstock yields. In this paper, we explore the use of multi-objective optimization to identify biofuel production pathways that balance cost, greenhouse gas emissions, and supply vulnerability to extreme weather. We compare the use of three different many-objective evolutionary algorithms and linear programming in optimizing biomass cultivation decisions in the U.S. Corn Belt under weather uncertainty using historical, modeled, and synthetic yield data. We consider four feedstock choices (corn, soy, switchgrass, and algae) with two land types (agricultural and marginal lands) and evaluate decisions using three alternative spatial resolutions (ranging from the USDA agricultural district level to the state level). Results show that feedstock choice is the primary driver of objective performance (i.e., the position and shape of 3D, approximate Pareto frontiers). Spatial diversification is a less effective tool in reducing exposure to weather-caused drops in crop yield.
09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
Study of eVTOL Charging Impact on Airport Electrical Grids
Growth in commercial air traffic has increased the aviation industry's contribution to global emissions. Aircraft electrification can reduce greenhouse gas emissions along with being efficient and reliable. Advanced air mobility introduces the idea of an advanced and more efficient air transportation system. Electric and hybrid aircraft designs, such as electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL), are being considered for a number of applications, such as urban air mobility, cargo delivery, and medical emergencies. Although the electrification of aircraft provides environmental benefits, their charging needs will place significant demand on the electrical grid. This work presents a grid impact study and infrastructure upgrade requirements analysis of eVTOL charging on a realistic distribution grid through power flow simulation analysis. The case study results show that the eVTOL charging can lead to power quality issues, such as undervoltage and equipment capacity overloading. Grid infrastructure, such as lines and transformers, would need to be upgraded, and voltage management strategies would need to be deployed to accommodate eVTOL charging at an existing airport.
advanced air mobility (AAM)↗
Convergent Aeronautics Solutions X1 Workshop for Electrification of Regional Transport Aircraft – Kickoff
NASA wants to change the way airplanes fly and the aviation industry along with it. The CAS Project invests in seemingly improbable ideas that might lead to solutions to the problems that plague aviation with respect to safety, environmental and community impact, and the global growth in air traffic.
Electrification↗