Preliminary analysis on the environment impact of civil narrow body turboprop aircraft

A study on the environment impact of civil narrow body turboprop aircraft was performed. Main target of this study is to investigate whether the turboprop is an environmental friendly power substitution for turbofan to power the civil narrow body aircraft through flight performance simulation in typical routes. The study was based on the utilization of three codes, aircraft performance model `APM', gas turbine performance model `TURBOMATCH', emission prediction tool `HEPHAESTUS', developed by Cranfield University, UK. Results show, the substitution of turbofan with turboprop can reduce the total fuel burn. But this benefit reduces from 18.9% to 6.5% with the increase of the flight range from 650km to 4000km due to stronger and stronger time penalty from 23% to 37%. In addition, this substitution can also reduce around 80% NOx emission, while the reduction of CO2 emission is proportional to the reduction of fuel burn.