Dear readers, 

It's been an exciting time for our consortium as we continue to make significant progress in our pursuit of low-carbon propulsion technologies and new fuels. We are delighted to bring you the latest updates on our activities and collaborations. 

Over the past few months, our consortium has been actively engaging with industry leaders and experts at various events. We had the pleasure of attending JEC World, a renowned composites event, where we had the opportunity to showcase our advancements in lightweight materials and their application in sustainable aviation. 

We also participated in the Clean Aviation Annual Forum, a key platform for discussing clean aviation initiatives. It was an excellent opportunity to exchange knowledge and ideas with other stakeholders in the industry. 

One of the major milestones we have achieved recently is the kick-off of our Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) activities. Led by Professor Sotirios Grammatikos from the Department of Manufacturing and Civil Engineering at NTNU, our dedicated team held a webinar for consortium partners, providing an overview of our LCA and LCCA activities within the OVERLEAF project. 

These assessments play a vital role in ensuring that our solutions meet not only environmental objectives but also economic considerations. We are committed to developing sustainable propulsion technologies that are not only ecologically sound but also commercially viable. 

Finally, we are thrilled to announce our collaboration with six other EU-funded projects through the establishment of the ClimAvTech cluster. These projects, including MINIMAL, BeCOM, MATISSE, OVERLEAF, HESTIA, and EFACA, share a common goal of developing low-carbon propulsion technologies and exploring alternative fuels such as hydrogen (H2). 

In this issue, we would like to dedicate some space to our sister projects. We believe it is important to showcase their achievements and the valuable contributions they are making to the field of sustainable aviation.

Emma Celeste Lope Retuerto

Project Coordinator

Aciturri 

CAELESTIS

“As CAELESTIS approaches the end of its first full year of activities, we’ve been able to build the foundations of the innovative new techniques our project aims to bring to Europe’s aviation industry.

Through the use of digital twins, machine learning, new composite material methods, and supercomputing, we’re hoping to speed up the process behind qualifying far lighter, and dare I say it, futuristic new components for the aircraft that carry millions of passengers every year across our skies. Following our first two meetings – one in person at the HQ of our coordinators AIMENT CT in Spain, and one online – it’s clear just how impressive the expertise of our international team is. We’re forging the technical connections and ties between expertise in aeronautical engineering, material science, and virtual reality to produce a framework capable of testing out staggering amounts of data.

We’re also happy to present our project video, which can be viewed on YouTube. A smooth take-off behind us, CAELESTIS is happy to report we’re about to hit cruising speed!"

BeCoM

“Contrail is one of the largest, but highly uncertain, climate forcer from civil aviation. One uncertainty source is the weather predictions for persistent contrails, due to insufficient water vapor measurements at cruise altitude, inaccurate treatment of Ice Supersaturation Regions (ISSRs) within the numerical weather prediction (NWP) model, etc. One of the important objectives of the BeCoM project is to improve the forecast of ISSRs.

To this end, the BeCoM partners have worked on multiple aspects, amongst which, one activity was to update ground-based lidars located in France to provide simultaneously the vertical cloud stratification and water vapor profiles for model comparisons. Furthermore, regarding ISSRs prediction, a concept for a one-moment cirrus microphysics scheme for numerical weather prediction (NWP) models has been formulated, which explicitly treats in-cloud supersaturation. The concept has been derived from a stochastic ensemble of air parcels that together represent one grid box in an NWP model. The air parcels form clouds independently, and the new parameterisation follows the stochastic ensemble quite closely. Details can be found in a recent article here.”

MINIMAL

"Horizon Europe and UKRI funded project, MINIMAL (Minimum environmental impact ultra-efficient cores for aircraft propulsion), started on 1st September 2022 aims to contribute to a radical transformation in air transport by providing disruptive ultra-efficient and low-emission technologies that will, in combination with the aviation ecosystem, sustainably reduce the climate impact of aviation.

Chalmers University of Technology (project coordinator), Göteborg, Sweden hosted the project kick-off meeting on 12th September 2022. The meeting included presentations by the consortium partners and the European Commission project officer. It was concluded with a visit to the new Chalmers low-pressure compressor rig facility, which will be used in MINIMAL to investigate novel heat-management concepts.

On May 17th 2023, the partners met online to review the updates on climate modelling for the aircraft propulsion systems developed by Delft University of Technology. It was followed by a round table discussion about the progress of the climate impact design concerning the MINIMAL engine concepts."