2018-01-1933 Published 30 Oct 2018 © 2018 SAE International. All Rights Reserved. Energetic, Environmental and Range Estimation of Hybrid and All-Electric Transformation of an Existing Light Utility Commuter Aircraft Michele Trancossi Shefeld Hallam University Jose Pascoa Universidade Da Beira Interior Citation: Trancossi, M. and Pascoa, J., “Energetic, Environmental and Range Estimation of Hybrid and All-Electric Transformation of an Existing Light Utility Commuter Aircraft,” SAE Technical Paper 2018-01-1933, 2018, doi:10.4271/2018-01-1933. Abstract T oday it is necessary to face the energetic, environ- mental, and safety-related issues of a signifcant indus- trial sector such as aeronautic one. It is a marginal contributor to today global GHG emissions (less than 3%), In any case, the associated impacts grows with the increase of air trafc with annual rate 5%. Consequently, aviation will need to face four fundamental problems for the future: 1. the overall impact of aviation is expected to grow up to 10÷15% of global GHG emissions by 2050; 2. the emissions of pollutants by commercial aviation afects the fragile atmospheric layers in the low stratosphere; 3. the increasing age of the fying feet deals with increasing maintenance and safety issues; 4. the dependence on fossil fuels relates to problems of geopolitical instability and consequence volatility of prices. Substantial innovations are expected for both reducing energy consumption and environmental impacts of aviation and reducing the age of the feets. Tey mostly relate to the decrease of weights and the introduction of environmental friendly propulsion systems, such as hybrid and all-electric propulsion. Tis paper will produce an assessment of diferent propul- sive systems according to the frst law of thermodynamics and environmental impacts. It assumes a well-tested light trans- port/commuter aircraf as reference architecture and produces a comparative analysis of diferent green propulsion systems including all electric and hybrid against actual aircrafs. Te analysis assumes that the electric or hybrid confgurations may not increase the overall mass of the aircraf. Energy model has been reformulated for the di ferent confgurations and considers both an analytical model based on basic fight mechanics and a new formulation of the Breguet range equation, which has been specifcally formulated for both hybrid and all-electric airplanes. Introduction Aviation and Environmental Issues Commercial aviation is a key sector of today society [1, 2]. It enables an unprecedented global connectivity and increases an efective global connectivity. Te global growth of aero- nautic industry is expected to continue over the next decades. Both Airbus and Boeing predict that passenger trafc alone will maintain a global average growth rate of around 4.7% per year up to 2036 (Figure 1). It must be remarked that ICAO estimates a higher growth rate of about 5% [3]. Consequently, the aircraf market is expected to grow even if at a lower rate (Figure 2). ICAO develops prediction models of aviation GHG emis- sions to 2040, and then extrapolates them to 2050 by assuming that 1 kg of jet fuel generates 3.16 kg of CO 2 . ICAO states that CO 2 emissions in 2020 are assumed as the global aspiration of keeping the net CO2 emissions at this FIGURE 1  Global world annual trafc forecasts (Airbus [4]) © SAE International Downloaded from SAE International by Michele Trancossi, Wednesday, July 24, 2019