In-flight Measurements of Contrails in the Low Soot Regime during the ecoDemonstrator Experiment

Analyzing the formation of contrails on emissions from the most recent generation of aircraft engines is key to understand the climate impact from aviation. As for conventional Rich-Quench-Lean engines contrail ice crystals mainly form on a high number of emitted soot particles, the question arises which and how many particles are activated during the contrail formation process if soot emissions are strongly reduced through the Lean Combustion technology.

The ecoDemonstrator experiment is a collaboration between Boeing, GE, NASA, DLR and other international partners and took place in October 2023. For the first time, we present in-flight measurements of contrail ice crystals in the exhaust of the ultra-low soot emitting CFM International LEAP-1B engine. This experiment combines the lean-burning engine technology with the use of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) and ultra-low sulfur kerosene (LS-Jet-A) in newly manufactured engines to achieve close to soot-free emissions. During the experiment, we performed measurements on board the NASA DC-8 research aircraft, sampling emissions behind a Boeing 737 MAX 10 aircraft. In addition to gas and particle emissions, we also measured the number concentrations of ice crystals that formed behind the 737 MAX 10 at a distance between 3 and 8 kilometers with two Cloud and Aerosol Spectrometers (CAS) that were positioned on the upper and lower fuselage of the DC-8. We show a first analysis of the contrail ice data for selected flights and present apparent ice emission indices (AEI) in relation to ambient conditions.