[ad_1]
Shipping parcels by air has a huge carbon footprint compared to trucks, trains or ships. But one startup has a new approach to trimming emissions from the next day’s air: attaching an additional glider to a cargo plane, a bit like an aviation U-haul trailer.
“You’re doubling the payload, but with just one engine and just one tank of gas,” says Todd Graetz, one of the startup’s founders. Irulan.
Graetz, who previously worked on drones for the railway company BNSF, has teamed up with Jur Kimchi and Doron Appelboim, who worked on drone delivery at Amazon. They realized there had to be a way to solve a common problem with air cargo: boxes often fill all the cubic space inside a plane before they reach the weight limit, so planes don’t transport as much as they could.
While studying the problem, they came across NASA research on the use of gliders. They also learned that the US Army used gliders in World War II to deliver soldiers and supplies. The basic concept is simple: a tow line connecting two planes (the plane in the back has no engine).
When the plane and glider — dubbed an “Aerocart” by Aerolane — take off, they use a little extra fuel. But once you reach cruising altitude, Graetz says, “the glider is already at the rate of speed you want to glide at naturally.” A glider takes advantage of the currents from the plane in front of it, in the same way that geese that fly in a V shape can fly more efficiently. “You can find pockets behind that plane where the waves are literally riding in the wake of the air,” he says.
Some companies are actually using gliders for recreational purposes now. It is possible to book a trip somewhere like Arizona desert Let a small plane launch your glider into the air, where it then detaches and soars silently on the convection currents. Aerolane will use current FAA regulations for gliders. You’ve started working with the agency to get approval for the things you will do differently while moving freight. This includes adding automation to control the glider as it tracks the aircraft on long flights.
The gliders will be attached to the cargo planes at the front. Aerolane also plans to start using retired planes as gliders, removing any parts it doesn’t need, from the engine to the passenger seats. Recycling old aircraft is a faster way to get the system up and running. “This is not a 10-year or five-year plan on some of these things,” Graetz says. “We will put some of this into commercial use next year.” (This timeline will depend, of course, on obtaining FAA approval quickly enough.)
Eventually, the company plans to use custom gliders designed from scratch to carry additional cargo. It will make different sized gliders fit different sizes of aircraft. To further reduce emissions, gliders can be used with aircraft powered by sustainable aviation fuel. Currently, alternative fuels are expensive, but because Aerolane reduces the cost of shipping so much, it could make the new fuel financially viable for more flights.
The system has other environmental advantages. If companies like UPS or FedEx can take simple gliders — especially if those gliders are recycled from planes that would otherwise be retired — they can avoid the carbon footprint of building complex new planes. It “naturally reduces emissions even earlier [they] “Put something in the air,” Graetz says.
The company is now in discussions with potential customers. Graetz believes that this approach can be used on a large scale. “We do not know of a situation where an airline operator is not interested in saving operational costs, fuel costs, wear and equipment,” he says. He says that if about 30% of current cargo planes started using trailers, it could eliminate about 60 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
[ad_2]
Source link
