Modeling the combustion emissions of sustainable aviation fuel blends

Abstract Assessing the thermodynamic and environmental performance of alternative fuel blends is crucial for energy management and climate change mitigation within the aviation industry. In this study, a data-driven impact assessment utilizing surrogate models was employed to evaluate the steady-state performance and emission characteristics of a turboprop gas turbine engine. Three synthetic paraffinic kerosene (HEFA, ATJ-SPK, and FT-SPK) blended with conventional Jet-A up to a 50% volumetric ratio were thoroughly investigated. Operating under a constant fuel mass flow rate boundary condition, the enhanced gravimetric energy density of the sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) yielded a direct mechanical power augmentation, resulting in up to a 1.0% reduction in Specific Fuel Consumption (SFC). The most critical contribution of this research is the isolation and quantification of the “double-benefit” phenomenon through a power-normalized specific emission framework. By integrating the chemical reduction in carbon oxidation with thermodynamic efficiency gains, the results demonstrated that actual operational emissions are significantly lower than mass-balance predictions. At the 50% blend limit, soot formation plummeted by exactly 40%. Furthermore, power-normalized specific emissions demonstrated net operational reductions of 3.1% for CO 2 and 3.06% for thermal NO x , which was effectively evaluated via a specialized quadratic surrogate model. Ultimately, this data-driven methodology emerges as a highly predictive and reliable tool for characterizing advanced fuel-engine integrations, facilitating data-driven decision-making to accelerate aviation’s transition to clean energy.