Technological aircraft evolution and aviation emissions: an environmental progress case for the A320 family in Brazil

Players involved in the global commercial aviation industry have committed to carbon neutral growth starting from 2020, and to a 50% reduction in emissions by 2050, even amid an expected growth in commercial demand during this period. Motivated by this challenging scenario, this study investigates the impact of the current aircraft incremental technological progress on greenhouse and local pollutant emissions, taking into consideration operational data from Brazilian air transport during the year 2018. A case study is conducted to estimate the emission efficiency of two different models of aircraft in the Airbus A320 family, which are one of the main parts of the commercial aviation Brazilian fleet. Emissions evaluated in the study are CO2, CH4, N2O, CO, VOC, SO2, NOx and PM2.5. In order to assess the emissions efficiency, the number of flights performed in the period, types of engines, consumption, distance flown, total weight transported and emission rates in different engine power configurations were collected for each aircraft model. Furthermore, a top-down methodology was applied to quantify the greenhouse emissions, and regarding the local pollutant emissions were performed a bottom-up approach dedicated to the different phases of the landing and take-off cycle. The results estimate a reduction of 28% in the average annual greenhouse gases emissions due to the gain in energy efficiency from the more recent generation of engines. In addition, they show that these engine improvements also provide a significant reduction in the emission of local pollutants mitigating the harmful effects on air quality in airport zones.