The COCOON project will develop and demonstrate integrated seat climatization, ventilation and air supply system, maturing the technology bricks to TRL6 for a standard economy 3-seat row with a target weight of <1kg to achieve personalised comfort control and a 2% fuel saving through reduced thermal load at the cabin level. Thermoelectric heating and cooling modules combined with a ventilation and air supply system will be controlled via a tablet or smartphone to provide advanced in-seat personalised microclimate control. The project will leverage previous work by UTRC which developed an in-seat microclimate control module for the business jet market by adapting it to the economy sector. UTRC Ireland will work with UTAS GEC Poland to design, test and validate a prototype of the system which will be integrated into BE’s current economy 3-row seat configuration and tested at the BE facility in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland.

The ECOSYSTEM project will develop and demonstrate at TRL 5, a high performance inert gas expansion system as a halon-free cargo hold fire suppression system. The demonstrator will be capable of storing inert gas over the temperature range -55°C to +85°C and expand (discharge) it over the temperature range -40°C to +70°C. The demonstrator will be capable of a constant high rate of inert gas flow over the range 230 – 350 g/s and a subsequent low flow rate of 10 – 30 g/s. The demonstrator will include safety features to allow safe aircraft operation and will contain all of the necessary instrumentation to characterize the static and transient conditions during its operation. The ECOSYSTEM TRL 5 prototype will be tested at the Fraunhofer Institute under both ground and simulated altitude conditions. The project will leverage previous work by UTRC and Collins Aerospace on the modelling, fabrication and testing of aircraft fire suppression systems and will benefit from Collins Aerospace’s deep understanding of the aircraft fire suppression business since Collins Aerospace currently develops and supplies commercial systems for various aircraft platforms .

Alternative fuels such as hydrogen (H2) are seen as playing a central role in a zero-emission future for aviation, but the level of penetration for H2 will depend heavily on scientific and technological breakthroughs to overcome the challenges posed by H2 powered aircraft. The safe and efficient storage of H2 on-board future aircraft is the essential enabler of H2 technologies and will be one of the most complex aerospace engineering challenges that the industry has ever faced. Improvements to existing state-of-the-art solutions includes a better utilization of the available space for fuel storage, adequate insulation techniques to minimize heat leak, continued safe operations, and a weight reduction through low-weight materials, such as thermoset or thermoplastic composites, all while addressing those materials’ inherent challenges (permeability, microcracking, thermal fatigue). COCOLIH2T consortium led by Collins Aerospace is proposing a disruptive concept focused on reducing the impact of the tank’s weight and volume within an aircraft, while ensuring system safety. COCOLIH2T will not only develop a safe composite and vacuum insulated LH2 tank for the aviation sector but has the ambition to go beyond by designing and manufacturing a conformal tank through novel fabrication technologies enabling a reduction of more than 60% in production energy consumption, at least 50% in production time leading to significantly lower manufacturing costs. Additionally, the proposed structure of the tank, based on a multi-material thermoplastic composite concept, is intended to facilitate aircraft structural integration to support overall system weight reduction compared with conventional tank configurations. The key challenge that COCOLIH2T will tackle is the generation of a feasible and affordable design of a conformal variable section box-shape tank while minimizing the boil-off leakages wherever possible. COCOLIH2T’s overall system will be demonstrated at TRL4 by 2025.