Systematic benchmarking of performance, environmental and sustainability impacts of utilization of alternative cleaner fuel in an aircraft gas turbine engine

Abstract

Recently, as a result of the increasing use of fossil fuels in the world, environmentally friendly alternative fuel researches have become an important topic. The present study aims to examine the possible consequences of hydrogen fuel usage as an alternative fuel on the general performance, sustainability performance and environmental performance in the medium scale aircraft turboprop engine. Within this aim, a comprehensive exergetic analysis of the turboprop engine is conducted for both the hydrogen fuel utilization case and jet fuel utilization case. Then, depending on the fourteen performance metrics determined for the concept of the study, the effects of hydrogen fuel usage were observed. As per the results, the fuel mass stream rate reduces from 0.0145 kg/s to 0.052 kg/s compared to the jet fuel usage, while the stationary stream of air mass rate is 8.66 kg/s. Pollutant emissions mass stream rate decreases from 8.805 kg/s to 8.712 kg/s. The fuel exergy rate of the overall system rises from 6588.29 kW to 7002.36 kW. The product exergy rate of the overall system drops from 1135.928 kW to 1134.495 kW. The waste exergy rate of the overall system increases from 5452.36 kW to 5867.87 kW. While the exergetic sustainability index and sustainable efficiency factor of the system decrease from 0.21 to 0.19 and decrease from 1.21 to 1.19, the environmental effect factor and ecological effect factor of the system increment from 4.80 to 5.17, an increment from 5.80 to 6.17, respectively. The environmental effect factor of the overall system increment from 2.36 to 2.57, while the sustainable efficiency factor of the overall system reduces from 1.42 to 1.38.