TsAGI researches help to make the world cleaner
24 May 2018
How do we reduce air emissions? What are the ways to develop environmentally friendly air transport? Is it possible to create a zero emission aircraft?
TsAGI Director General and Academician of RAS Sergey Chernyshev devoted his report to these international aviation issues at the Berlin Aviation Summit. Dr. Chernyshev considered various options to minimize harmful emissions into the atmosphere. For one, a decrease in fuel consumption will reduce the emission. Also, it will be possible if we improve aircraft aerodynamics or apply special aircraft handling. Another way is to replace kerosene by methane or hydrogen. The Institute Head focused his report primarily on hydrogen.
“Russia is one of the few countries that has the experience of cryogen fuel application in aviation,” explained Sergey Chernyshev in his report. “The use of such fuels, liquid hydrogen in particular, provides many advantages for the new generation civil and transport aircraft. The main benefit is the increase of aircraft fuel efficiency and a significant reduction of harmful emissions. However, to adopt these fuels we should first perform research and analytics to make thermal protection systems, chose fuel tank material and others.”
Currently, TsAGI explores regimes of short-, medium- and long-range cryogenically powered aircraft. We discuss different arrangements for fuel tanks of this fuel type with a high aspect-ratio aircraft wing. There are unusual aircraft configurations with fuel tanks in the wing, on the fuselage, aircraft with built-in tanks, etc.
The Berlin Aviation Summit is a discussion platform for the international community. Representatives of science, politics, and industry take part in the event. The adoption of new energy sources for the global aviation system of the future became the key topic for this year’s discussion. The German Aerospace Industries Association (BDLI) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) organized the event.