Particulate Matter (PM) emissions from aircraft engines adversely affect air quality in and around airports, contributing to public health concerns for airport workers and within neighbouring communities. RAPTOR will bring together relevant stakeholders to bridge a wide and multidimensional portfolio of existing European research to: i) provide enhanced insights into PM including the ultrafine PM (UFP) component within aircraft exhaust emissions; ii) explore interdependencies between noise and emissions particularly NOx and UFP; iii) work in association with other national and EU funded projects to determine a more nuanced understanding of the potential impact of UFP on health outcomes; iv) provide new insights on emission/exhaust measurement and emission modelling uncertainties; v) create a more comprehensive understanding on the composition and potential importance of emissions from unregulated engines; and vi) support the European Commission and associated Agencies to develop a coherent European roadmap for action on aircraft engine particulate matter regulation. To achieve these ambitious goals RAPTOR will undertake an in-depth review of available literature to assess knowledge gaps. This will include non-volatile nvPM measurement techniques & corrections and their associated uncertainties as these directly impact modelling studies of local air quality and inform aircraft-induced PM related toxicity and health effects. Findings will be communicated in an open access database, highlighting interdependencies between the measurements, modelling and health disciplines. RAPTOR will forge synergistic links with existing national, EU and international projects to ensure a high degree of additionality and provide access to desensitised proprietary data. RAPTOR will also generate new data using a representative combustor rig to assess uncertainty of the current CAEP/11 nvPM standards, utilising two reference ICAO appendix 7-compliant nvPM systems.

Emissions from aircraft have adverse effects on the air quality in and around airports, contributing to public health concerns within neighboring communities. AVIATOR will adopt a multi-level measurement, modelling and assessment approach to develop an improved description and quantification of the relevant aircraft engine emissions, and their impact on air quality under different climatic conditions. Engine particulate and gaseous emissions in a test cell and on-wing from an in-service aircraft will be measured to determine pollutant plume evolution from the engine and APU exhaust. This will provide an enhanced understanding of primary emitted pollutants, specifically the nvPM and vPM (down to 10nm), and the scalability between the regulatory test cell and real environments. AVIATOR will develop and deploy across multiple airports, a proof-of-concept low cost sensor network for the monitoring of UFP, PM and gaseous species such as NOx and SOx, across airport and surrounding communities. Transport and impact of emissions from aircraft engines and APU will be monitored in this more complex environment through high fidelity and sensor measurements. Campaigns will be complemented by high-fidelity modelling of aircraft exhaust dynamics, microphysical and chemical processes within the plume. CFD, box, and airport air quality models will be applied, providing validated parameterizations of the relevant processes, applicable to standard dispersion modelling on the local scale. Working with the regulatory community, AVIATOR will develop improved guidance on measuring and modelling the impact of aircraft emissions with specific reference to UFP. Acknowledging the uncertainty surrounding health impacts of UFP, AVIATOR will work with the public health community to develop methodologies for the representative sampling of aircraft emissions. AVIATOR will provide airports and regulators with tools and guidance to improve the assessment of air quality in and around airports.