A thermoeconomic analysis of a commercial aircraft environmental control system

In this work a particular application of thermoeconomics to aeronautics is performed. The cost balance has been applied to the environmental control system (ECS) of an aircraft as a component and the cost per unit of exergy of the conditioning stream entering the cabin has been obtained for a range of the aircraft engine bleed pressure values. A minimum cost has been found at a pressure close to the nominal bleed pressure. The thermoeconomic data used here to obtain the results are real ones from actual devices. In the model proposed here the operating costs are due mainly to the fact that it is necessary to transport the system. This is a special feature of aircraft systems that makes them different from other thermal devices. The exergoeconomic factors obtained are very high compared with the usual ones obtained for other types of thermal systems.