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Home > Presentation > Archives > Old projects > FIRST - Fuel Injector Research for Sustainable Transport

FIRST - Fuel Injector Research for Sustainable Transport

FIRST stands for Fuel Injector Research for Sustainable Transport. It is a 4 years project with a total budget of 7.3 million euros, partly
funded by the European Commission and co-ordinated by Rolls-Royce Plc. The FIRST Consortium brings together the leading universities, research centres, industries and SMEs of the European Aerospace community.


FIRST will deliver key enabling technologies for combustion emissions reduction by developing improved design tools and techniques for modelling and controlling fuel sprays and soot.

Aviation’s environmental impact must be reduced to allow sustainable growth to benefit European industry and society. This is captured in ACARE’s 2020 goals of reducing CO2 by 50%, NOx by 80% and in SRA1/2 proposed reductions in soot and the development of alternative fuels.

By understanding and controlling the complex physics of fuel atomisation and mixing, the emissions performance can be directly improved. CFD simulations have for many years relied upon over-simplistic definitions of the fuel spray. The availability of methods developed in the automotive industry and faster computers make their application to aero-engines timely.

The FIRST project will deliver a step change in the detail and accuracy of the fuel spray boundary conditions; through novel physics based modelling techniques, advanced diagnostic measurements and the derivation of sophisticated correlations.

FIRST will also deliver improved CFD soot models, thereby, enabling the reduction of soot in aero-engine combustors. These calculations require improved fuel spray boundary conditions but also need higher fidelity physical and chemical models describing the soot production and consumption processes.

The design of future alternative fuels will be enhanced by FIRST by performing predictions and measurements of both fuel sprays and soot across a number of alternative fuels.