Battle hots up for cleaner jet engines

By Kevin Done in London
Published: October 23 2008 18:58

General Electric is soon to begin tests of new jet engine technology that holds the prospect of sharply reducing aircraft fuel consumption and carbon emissions by the end of the next decade.
It is joining forces with Nasa, the US aeronautics and space administration, to begin wind tunnel testing early next year of innovative designs of so-called open rotor technology.

The tests will intensify the growing transatlantic competition to develop the jet engines to power the next generation of short-haul aircraft.
Rolls-Royce is making similar moves to GE, as the leading US and European engine makers investigate technologies they hope will be chosen by Airbus and Boeing for their future jets to replace their existing respective A320 and 737 families of aircraft.
These aircraft generate a large part of the revenues and profits of both Airbus and Boeing.
Winning the battle to power the aircraft is one of the biggest prizes available to the engine makers in coming years, but they also face a big gamble in investment and choice of technology.
GE and Rolls-Royce both believe open rotor engine technology offers the biggest potential gains in fuel efficiency and reducing emissions, but it has drawbacks in noise and would require radical departures in aircraft design, possibly with two large engines mounted at the rear of the aircraft.
The engines would have two open banks of counter-rotating fan blade systems with a diameter of about 14 feet and would be too big to mount under the wings as is the case with conventional jet engines.
GE will announce that it plans to begin testing open rotor fan blade designs in Nasa wind tunnel facilities early next year.
It said rising fuel prices had led it to return to the development of open rotor technology, which had been under investigation in the 1980s but had been shelved, when oil prices fell and there had not been the same drive to cut emissions of climate change gases.
GE Aviation unveiled a series of future technologies earlier this year for engines for narrow-body aircraft, which it claimed would cut fuel consumption and emissions by as much as 16 per cent and could be available by 2015-16.
Chet Fuller, chief marketing officer of GE Aviation, said open rotor technology could give further savings of 10-12 per cent, but would not be commercially available until 2018 at the earliest.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008