Fuel Readiness Level
The leadership of the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI) needed a way
to classify and track progress on research, certification, and demonstration activities. A variety
of scales were in use by CAAFI organizations including TRL (Technology Readiness Level)
used by industry, NASA, and the Air Force and Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) used by
the Air Force and others. Originally, an Airbus CAAFI representative developed a special TRL
scale for fuel development, but it was a mixture of research achievements and production
development. The CAAFI leadership team wanted a new fuel development scale that would
allow for parallel fuel research activities and certification activities, as well as clearly showing
how to transition activities between the CAAFI R&D, Certification, and Business & Economics
teams. Also, CAAFI desired to show how these new Fuel Readiness Levels (FRL) mapped to
the TRL and MRL scales also in use.
The leaders of the CAAFI Certification and R&D teams developed the FRL table contained in
this document. It includes descriptions that are customized to fuel research and certification
events and includes specific items of interest to CAAFI members, including required fuel
quantities. Note that the fuel quantities listed are from CAAFI Certification guidelines, and the
Air Force uses different fuel quantities in their military fuel certification process. Color coding
used to show the transition points between the CAAFI R&D, Certification, and Business &
Economics teams. The CAAFI teams operate with the realization that overlap will occur, with
R&D leading FRL 1-5, Certification FRL 6-7, and Business & Economics FRL 8-9.
Environment Team assessment requirements will also overlap with the FRL. Preliminary
assignments of environmental touchpoints are reflected in steps 3 and 8.
The roadmaps and milestone databases developed and maintained by CAAFI use FRL to help
organize and track the research and development milestones and the process of developing,
certifying, and supplying alternative fuels to commercial aviation.
The FRL was endorsed at the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels (CAAF) meeting in Rio de Janeiro in November 2009.
The outcomes of that meeting can be found at:
http://www.icao.int/CAAF2009/Docs.htm.
For further information and details about the FRL levels, please contact us at
info@caafi.org.
Download the Fuel Readiness Level PDF (click on the image to download the file):
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