Overview
Particulate Matter (PM) emissions from aircraft engines adversely affect air quality in and around airports, contributing to public health concerns for airport workers and within neighbouring communities. RAPTOR will bring together relevant stakeholders to bridge a wide and multidimensional portfolio of existing European research to:
- provide enhanced insights into PM including the ultrafine PM (UFP) component within aircraft exhaust emissions;
- explore interdependencies between noise and emissions particularly NOx and UFP;
- work in association with other national and EU funded projects to determine a more nuanced understanding of the potential impact of UFP on health outcomes;
- provide new insights on emission/exhaust measurement and emission modelling uncertainties;
- create a more comprehensive understanding on the composition and potential importance of emissions from unregulated engines; and
- support the European Commission and associated Agencies to develop a coherent European roadmap for action on aircraft engine particulate matter regulation.
To achieve these ambitious goals RAPTOR will undertake an in-depth review of available literature to assess knowledge gaps. This will include non-volatile nvPM measurement techniques & corrections and their associated uncertainties as these directly impact modelling studies of local air quality and inform aircraft-induced PM related toxicity and health effects. Findings will be communicated in an open access database, highlighting interdependencies between the measurements, modelling and health disciplines.
RAPTOR will forge synergistic links with existing national, EU and international projects to ensure a high degree of additionality and provide access to desensitised proprietary data. RAPTOR will also generate new data using a representative combustor rig to assess uncertainty of the current CAEP/11 nvPM standards, utilising two reference ICAO appendix 7-compliant nvPM systems.