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On November 18, 2019, I attended the kickoff meeting of the project RAPTOR (Research of Aviation PM Technologies, Modeling and Regulation) organized by the coordinator ENVISA in Paris.
RAPTOR is a part of the European research program Clean Sky funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 program. The project brings together experts from academia and industry intending to improve our understanding of the air quality and health impacts of aviation particulate matter (PM) emissions. RAPTOR includes work packages (WP) dealing with health impact, modeling review, and PM measurement. Our team is involved in the latter two.
The modeling review WP aims to improve approaches for modeling aircraft engine PM (non-volatile and volatile fractions). This requires reviewing measurement data that can be used to improve relationships and correlations used for estimating aircraft emissions and their dispersion around airports and at cruising altitudes. This WP feeds into the health impact WP, as local dispersion of pollutants around an airport can have a significant impact on health.
The measurement WP focuses on quantifying uncertainties in the current and future ICAO standards for PM. As a part of this WP, we will perform extensive experiments on a combustor rig simulating an aero-engine combustor at the Gas Turbine Research Centre (GTRC) near Cardiff in Wales, UK. There, SMARTEMIS will be reunited with the European nvPM sampling and reference system after more than 7 years (operated by the Cardiff University / GTRC team around Dr. Andrew Crayford). This will be an excellent opportunity to compare the two systems side-by-side to evaluate the variability and different sources of uncertainty. We will perform two campaigns and the first one is planned for October 2020.
The kickoff meeting was very intense, but productive. It was good to finally meet the project team members that I had only heard during teleconferences before and to gain perspective on health impact research and emissions modeling. As usual, the social activities following the meeting could not be missed.