Reducing the Exposure to Soot and Carcinogenic Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Emissions from Jet Fuel Combustion by Pentanol Blending

Constantinos Moularas, Una Trivanovic, Irini Tsiodra, Nikolaos Mihalopoulos, GEORGIOS A. KELESIDIS, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

     Abstract Number: 89
     Working Group: Carbonaceous Aerosols

Abstract
Here, the potential of jet fuel blending with pentanol is explored to assist the reduction of soot and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emissions from aircraft engines. The concentration, morphology, nanostructure and chemical composition of soot generated by enclosed spray combustion of jet fuel and pentanol are characterized using real-time and time- integrated sampling instrumentation. Increasing the pentanol content in the fuel blend enhances the oxidation of soot, decreases its mass concentration up to 70 % and the concentration of its constituent carcinogenic PAHs up to 20 %. Soot agglomerates and primary particles emitted by combustion of jet fuel blends with pentanol are smaller and have a more disordered nanostructure than those produced using standard jet fuel. This reduces the soot effective density up to 40 % and increases its specific surface area (SSA) up to 45 %. The measured physicochemical properties are interfaced with a multi-path particle dosimetry model to derive the surface area and genotoxic potential of the lung deposited soot for an exemplary exposure scenario at an airport. It is shown that the deposited soot surface area increases by blending jet fuel with 20 vol % of pentanol due to the large soot SSA produced at these conditions. Further increasing the pentanol content in jet fuel to 40 vol%, reduces the deposited soot surface area and genotoxic potential up to 56 and 74 %, respectively. Thus, optimization of the pentanol content in jet fuel could eliminate the public health impact of soot and PAH emissions from aircraft engines.