Do not be fooled by appearances. This air-conditioning pack, under development for the last six years at Liebherr-Aerospace, is a major innovation because it is electric. A concept that soon will no longer have to take the very hot high-pressure air from aircraft engines.
Laurent Hartenstein, Liebherr-Aerospace Products Development Director: interview in the video.
Usually, this is in fact, air taken from inside the engines, which is compressed to, for example, pressurize the cabin or defrost the wings of an airplane. With this system, the air is drawn from outside the aircraft via a scoop, a kind of air inlet, located on the underside of the fuselage, and would therefore be electrically compressed. Kerosene consumption of the air-conditioning packs should thus be halved compared to current systems, which use 1.5% of an aircraft’s total fuel.
Within the framework of the JTI-Clean-Sky European research project, this system will be installed and flight tested, during the first half 2016, on two test aircraft: an ATR72 and an A320.
When this "greener" system is to be marketed then depends on the aircraft manufacturers and their responsiveness to the installation of these new packs on their future aircraft.
