Joining Secretary Canfield at the 2023 Paris Air Show are representatives from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Auburn University and Southern Union Community College, which has three campuses in East Alabama.

On Monday, these educators participated in a panel discussion at the air show’s U.S. Pavilion focusing on Alabama’s extensive network of educational resources and training programs for growing aerospace companies.

They’ve also participated in appointments with aerospace companies while at the air show.

DESIGNING ROCKETS

The University of Alabama in Huntsville offers a vibrant example of brainpower at work, with the institution achieving a record $169.5 million in research and development expenses during Fiscal 2022, an increase of 13% from the prior year.

UAH also had five top 20 research programs in a recent federal survey, including a No. 6 ranking for aerospace, aeronautical and astronautical engineering.

Just this month, a student team of mechanical and aerospace engineering majors was named the overall winner of the 2023 NASA Student Launch, a competition held last spring that included 51 other university teams from 20 states and Puerto Rico.

Over the course of eight months, UAH’s Charger Rocket Works team worked to design, build and fly an eight-foot rocket and payload to an altitude between 4,000 and 6,000 feet, while also making a successful landing.

BRAIN WAVES

Hands-on experience will also be emphasized in a new research lab at Auburn University.

The Aerospace and Aviation ID Lab aims to promote serialized identification technologies to better track passenger cargo, safety equipment, maintenance history and many more products and tasks related to commercial flights.

It’s part of Auburn’s Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Lab that is focused on implementing the technologies in the retail, supply chain and manufacturing sectors. Such technologies use radio waves to identify objects, via tags scanned by RFID readers.

Other sensor technology, such as Bluetooth and low energy computer vision, will also be a focus of the new lab, as will other types of inventory on space vehicles.

Tuskegee University is also making contributions to advance the aerospace industry.

In 2021, the Department of Defense announced plans for an Aerospace Education Research and Innovation Center (AERIC) at Tuskegee to enhance research in critical areas and expand the future technical talent pipeline for the industry.

FUELING SUSTAINABILITY

Meanwhile, University of Alabama researchers are working to create jet fuel from plants, an effort aimed at helping the airline industry meet critical emissions reduction goals.

Currently, commercial aviation accounts for 2% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, says the U.S. Department of Energy, which is providing $2.5 million to support the UA project.

Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, can be made from renewable biomass and also corn grain, algae, agricultural and forestry residues and municipal solid waste streams.

SAF has the potential to deliver the same results as petroleum-based jet fuel, but it must be produced on a large scale at the same cost. In the UA project, professors and students are studying a catalyst that processes ethanol to tackle those challenges.

“In order to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation industry, the carbon footprint of the fuel has to be minimized,” said Dr. James Harris, UA assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and project lead.

“For sustainable aviation fuel to scale up from limited use it needs to be processed much more energy and cost efficiently, and our project is a key step towards producing jet fuel from renewable sources,” he added.