Retrofitting Airbus A320 to work on Liquified Natural Gas
EMIL Jebbawi (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
Arvind Gangoli Rao – Mentor (TU Delft - Flight Performance and Propulsion)
Roelof Vos – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Flight Performance and Propulsion)
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Abstract
The aviation sector is growing every year with a steady pace of 5%. With this growth, the greenhouse emissions can only rise in the future until new innovative aircraft are designed such as electrical aircraft. An interim solution is to switch the fuel from kerosene to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). LNG is much cleaner for the environment, cheaper and more abundant. This study looks into retrofitting conventional aircraft to work on LNG, in this case an Airbus A320 since it the most used airplane in the commercial aviation. A cryogenic tank to store the LNG, was designed and incorporated into the cargo bay replacing some of the cargo. The two aircraft were generated and compared using a preliminary design tool, the Initiator. The LNG aircraft achieved a significant reduction in CO2 and NOx , 24% and 69% respectively. In addition to a potential saving of 17% in direct operating cost.