Energy efficiency analysis of electric and conventional environmental control system on commercial aircraft

For the past decades, more electrical power components have been embedded in aircraft system. As one of the most energy-consuming subsystems onboard, environmental control system (ECS) is difficult to design and evaluate. To analyze efficiency of electric and conventional ECS, simulations are performed under typical flight profile. Since electric and pneumatic power are used for these two subsystems, accurate criteria should be established for computation. Therefore, exergy analysis is introduced to compare air bleeding with electric power off-Take. Results show that, air bleeding is more efficient and produces less impact to engine than electric power off-Take, considering same amount of exergy is extracted independently. However, the electric ECS gains a higher advantage of the whole system than conventional ECS.