Still Bringing Good Things to Life …

General Electric will unveil what the company is calling a digital experience at the upcoming Farnborough International Airshow. The presentation, titled GE to Net Zero, will be staged at the GE Pavilion for purpose of making known to showgoers the lengths to which GE has gone to meet its lofty ambition of being net-zero by 2050.

The term net-zero is a neologism coined to describe the complete negation of greenhouse gasses produced by human activity.

As more than 39,000 of its commercial jet-engines traverse the world’s skies, GE has committed itself to the perhaps-ironic, perhaps-laudable enterprise of developing fuel-saving innovations. It’s an old song, often sung insincerely by companies seeking to capitalize on the optics of ecological stewardship while holding fast to archaic, industrial-revolution ideologies. GE, however, is putting its money where its mouth is, $1.6-billion, to be exact—which the company spent in 2021 alone developing emission-reducing technologies.  

Allen Paxson, vice president and general manager of GE Aviation commercial program strategy states: “We recently renewed our commercial engines portfolio, introducing more fuel-efficient engines than their predecessors. Over the last year, we’ve also outlined the technology building blocks we’re developing for the future to further improve fuel efficiency, compatible with lower-carbon alternative fuels.”

The costly and meritorious steps GE has taken in the last year include a partnership with Airbus and CFM International [CFM International is a GE-Safran Aircraft Engines 50-50 joint-venture] to flight-test a hydrogen-powered engine; a partnership with NASA and Boeing to develop and fly a megawatt-class hybrid electric propulsion system; and a collaboration with CFM on the organization’s RISE (Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines) Program, which seeks to develop open-fan engine architectures theoretically capable of achieving at least twenty-percent lower fuel consumption and CO2 emissions than today’s most efficient engines.

GE’s most recent engines are more fuel efficient than those they replace. The GE9X which will power Boeing’s 777X is up to ten-percent more fuel efficient than the GE90 engine that powered the 1990s vintage 777-200. Advanced materials such as ceramic matrix composites and additively manufactured [3-D printed] parts contribute to the new engine’s efficiency. What’s more, all GE, CFM, and Engine Alliance power-plants [Engine Alliance is a GE-Pratt & Whitney 50-50 joint-venture] can operate on approved Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs).

In addition to GE’s efforts to engineer better engines, the company has developed a product called 360 Foam Wash, an advanced on-wing cleaning agent that utilizes a proprietary detergent to keep turbine-engines running cleanly—thereby reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

Since 2007, GE has tested biofuels and supported SAF testing and flight demonstrations. GE holds leadership roles in SAF qualification and standardization bodies such as ASTM—including committees and task forces in charge of new pathway approvals, maintenance of the synthetic fuel specification, and standardization of one-hundred-percent drop-in SAF—which is to say SAF that does not require blending with conventional jet fuel.

FMI: www.geaviation.com