Airbus completes world first GTL-powered flight
The aircraft industry is feeling the heat when it comes to their emissions just as the automakers are. In an effort to reduce air travel's carbon footprint, Airbus is testing a new type of aircraft fuel called GTL, which is a liquid fuel made from natural gas. Natural gas emits the least amount of carbon of any fossil fuel, so the resulting liquid fuel is much greener than ordinary jet fuel. Research suggests that GTL can also be created synthetically using the Fischer-Tropsch process.
Airbus has successfully completed a flight using a blend of GTL and regular jet fuel. The flight, starting in the UK and ending in France, was successful and "will pave the way for approval of synthetic jet fuel in the future," according to Sjoerd Post, Vice President of Shell Aviation. Airbus President and CEO Tom Enders says that "It is part and parcel of Airbus' commitment to providing leadership as an eco-efficient enterprise". Here is a link to a video regarding the flight.
Considering that greenhouse gas emissions in Europe have increased 87 percent from 1990 to 2006, innovative solutions like GTL fuel will likely become increasingly important.
[Source: Airbus via Gizmag]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Peter L 8:23PM (2/05/2008)
Great to read about, Aircraft and ships need to clean up their act re pollutants.
Air New Zealand glides in to the airports, every little helps.
British Airways 777 took gliding to the extreme last month. A little more fuel might have helped.
Reply
rob 9:37PM (2/05/2008)
Can someone please explain how GTL Kerosene has less carbon, well to, uh, wings... Less than Kerosene from oil?
Fischer-Tropsch xTL is energy intensive. Certainly more energy intensive than refining crude. CTL is barely worth doing even with coal being so cheap, and natural gas is far more expensive than coal.
Reply
rob 9:37PM (2/05/2008)
Er.. I meant barely worth doing economically. From a CO2 standpoint CTL is about 2x as bad as petroleum. I can't imagine GTL is much better.
Reply
Marty 10:34PM (2/05/2008)
This is just not true: "Natural gas emits the least amount of carbon of any fossil fuel, so the resulting liquid fuel is much greener than ordinary jet fuel."
When burned, this GTL fuel emits about the same amount of CO2, but more CO2 is emitted in the refinery process. The net effect is 10%-50% more total CO2 emissions. GTL is not a GREEN fuel! This is a pet project of Qatar ... not known for being GREEN ...
Reply
meme 2:32AM (2/06/2008)
One thing I've wondered about is this: battery tech is really taking off. There are now three different techs promising several times better energy density than the best li-ions currently: lithium vanadium oxide li-ion, silicon nanowire li-ion, and EEStor's EESU. These all give electrics equivalent or superior range to gasoline-powered vehicles, but lets you run them with far less maintenance and energy expense. The same should apply to turboprops as well. But what about jets?
Sure, you can use electricity to make heat. You don't get the expanding combustion gasses, but you can make the intake air heat up, and thus expand. However, this really doesn't work out as a reasonable solution; the reason why electric motor-powered cars (and turboprops) can even compete with gasoline/kerosene is the inefficiency of gasoline engines. But when you burn fuel in a jet engine to create heat, almost all of that fuel energy is going to heat. Electricity really can't cut it for that application.
So, can it ever replace jets? What I've been wondering is whether cheaper-to-operate electric turboprops could ever push jets aside. After all, there are high performance "scimitar" turboprops that have the same sort of operating speeds as jet aircraft, and are already cheaper to operate. The downside is that they're noisier.
Reply
rgseidl 8:20AM (2/06/2008)
Like all F-T liquids, GTL is sulfur-free. It gets green points for reducing acid rain, but none regarding well-to-jet CO2 emissions. The one bright spot is that creating a market for GTL may prompt R&D into micro F-T plants that could turn associated gas into valuable liquid fuel at the wellhead. Currently, associated gas is flared or even vented unless it is feasible and economical to pump it back into the oil reservoir. The total amount flared world-wide each year would be enough to meet the world's natural gas consumption for approx. 20 days, i.e. about 5% of total gas production is currently wasted.
But the environment isn't really what this Airbus trial was all about. It was about Qatar and Shell pushing GTL because the country has large natural gas reserves and the company needs to shore up its proven reserves.
Reply
BikerBill 9:07AM (2/06/2008)
Hey Peter L,
Who told you that Air New Zealand glides into airports?
Think about it...what if something happened on the runway and you needed to abort the landing? What if you encountered a headwind on the turn to final approach? What if you knew that standard operating procedure was to approach at a 3° slope at 30% power?
It's noise, not CO2 that is the main driver in aircraft engine design.
Reply
Karkus 10:08AM (2/06/2008)
It's nice that GTL has been demonstrated - it gives the airline industry another option, and it looks like it is in fact less polluting in terms of acid rain, ozone, particulates, etc.
However, this is unfortunately another case of the blogger forgetting to JFGI ! Hello Bloggers...check your facts before posting. With the internet, it should only take you a couple of minutes to check the CO2 claim.
I can certainly believe it's cleaner in other ways, but the fact is that you're still burning some form of carbon coming out of the ground, so the CO2 just can't be different enough to claim it being "much greener" in terms of CO2. Plus then you have to consider processing/refining CO2.
Reply
Willis 1:51PM (2/06/2008)
@meme
regarding electric jets.. Electric drive is possible for turboshaft (helicopters) and turbofan (large commercial airliners) replacement. Electric drive makes has little relevance to ramjets for "green" supersonic cruise missiles ;)
Reply