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Fuelly issues

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dantura said:
I thought that cladis was formed due to the prolonged standing of the fuel/water interface?
I have found massive jellyfish in blending rigs in the past, which contained F34FSII, but these had been standing for some time.
This is the reason why we have a QA program of continual flushing/circulating of fuel in any source/installation.
If F34 has been sitting for a long time, the AL48 separates and by its very nature attracts the suspended water in the fuel into pockets. This subsequently provides the perfect growing conditions for cladis.

Hence, this is the reason PSD's store AVTUR as F35 and blend it en-route to the user.
The QA requirements are far less for storing F35 as opposed for F34.


D
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If you store fuel as F35 how long does it take to blend if it is enroute to the user via hydrant. Or can you only do it through to a bowser. Just I've been around the BFI near POL at BZN but never seen a blending area?
 
Ramp Rat 9 said:
If you store fuel as F35 how long does it take to blend if it is enroute to the user via hydrant. Or can you only do it through to a bowser. Just I've been around the BFI near POL at BZN but never seen a blending area?
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We store the fuel as F34, it is blended en-route to us from the PSD, who store it as F35.
When were you in Brize BFI's? On a fuels course? If so, you should know a lot of what we're talking about.

D
 
I've never worked with fuels, I was at brize from June 01 till Oct 06. Esg-fwd del-tech-mtlfp.

I went through pol for my tats in 01
 
Ramp Rat 9 said:
I've never worked with fuels, I was at brize from June 01 till Oct 06. Esg-fwd del-tech-mtlfp.

I went through pol for my tats in 01
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We'll be meeting again then, if you're going on TSW, as you'll have to do a fuel managers course. You'll be doing a visit back here to Brize as part of the course.

D
 
Nah mate I'm not going to TSW, staying where I am. The Desk really did me a favour and was able to keep me up here. Loved every second at bzn but the misses rang my drafter and got me posted "cow"
 
Can I ask another [daft] question?.
If water exists in Jet fuel, why not chill/ freeze it and filter out the water on delivery to the plane ?
 
Ex-Bay said:
Can I ask another [daft] question?.
If water exists in Jet fuel, why not chill/ freeze it and filter out the water on delivery to the plane ?
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That does seem like a good idea.
However,

We do currently have a number of filtration processes before the fuel is issued to the A/C:
Firstly, it is filtered for any solid matter, when brought onto the station using specialist filters.
Secondly, it is filtered into 'in-use' BFIs, using Filter water separators (FWS). These filter the water using, usually, silicon based coalescers. Remember, water is more dense than fuel, so it is quite a simple process.
Finally, the fuel is again filtered, just before issue to the A/C, with on-board FWS. This is whether it is issued using a hydrant dispensing vehicle or a bowser.

Getting back to the freezing part, this would involve a whole other process of using cryo gases to bring the temperature down. This would have to be done very slowly, passing the fuel through a 'cooled chamber?'. I don't know the maths or physics involved in making this process work (I can find out!), but the only viable option, as you stated, would be to do it on issue and not on storage. With the amount of fuel we can issue to 1 A/C being on average about 40-50t and sometimes up to 200t it would take an incredibly long time, making it none viable.

Also, this does not get around the problem of water formed in the A/C tanks. It doesn't matter how many times you filter fuel, you will ALWAYS get water forming in any tank. (condensation etc). The best practise is to keep your tanks as full as possible. This, obviously, being impossible, especially in A/C tanks.

Nice thinking though!


D
 
Norman the Storeman said:
Google not required RAF Bird. As you know I love all hydro-carbon, petroleum based products and commit such information to memory. I often use it to impress colleagues and attractive young ladies alike. :PDT_Xtremez_15:
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Aye the merits of existent gum tests over distillation tests are a sure fire way to get a ladies knickers off.

Personally I've always been a fan of flash point testing apparatus but that the kind of pervert I am.
 
If you store fuel as F35 how long does it take to blend if it is enroute to the user via hydrant. Or can you only do it through to a bowser.
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Although its technically possible to blend fuel directly into a receiving tanker/aircraft doing so would raise a whole raft of other issues.

The standard blending rigs used by the RAF are horribley inaccurate pieces of equipment that can fall out of calibration soon as look at them so to counter this a 'test blend' is always carried out to ensure the rig is delivering the right ration of AL48 to F35 (1 part to 800 if memory serves me correct).

A further test that is often carried out even if the blending rig is operating correctly is that the blended fuel is blended into a 'buffering' tank (separate from in-use and already cleared fuel) to allow it to stand for a minimum of 4 hours before being tested with a refractometer to once again ensure the correct ration of FSII to fuel. Any problems with the fuel (too little or too much FSII) can then be addressed by either adding extra FSII via the blending rig or by blending out too much FSII by adding extra F35. This is a fairly simple mathematical process using ratios in which your high-trained CLA (hello) will be familiar with.

One procedure that did vary slightly to the above was the blending of F35 into F34 directly into a road tanker as was carried out in Basra when I was out there.

As for how long it takes, well a 5 x 50,000Ltr off-load and blend used to take us about 4.5 hours, which included bulking one of the tankers with F34 for its journey up-country. Although the Deutz 450GPM pumps as their name suggests can fire a fair bit of fuel through them the pinch points are the blending rig and the hydrodynamics of the particular fuel site, which both add up to slow the receiving process.
 
dantura said:
We'll be meeting again then, if you're going on TSW, as you'll have to do a fuel managers course. You'll be doing a visit back here to Brize as part of the course.

D
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D

The managers course now go to a base near Lincoln where a/c with mushrooms on top. Brize has not been used since Nov last yaer.
 
Rack Shelf Bin said:
D

The managers course now go to a base near Lincoln where a/c with mushrooms on top. Brize has not been used since Nov last yaer.
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You know?...I actually knew that and you know that I knew it and I know that you knew that I knew it. The senility is obviously starting to kick in....NURSE!


D
 
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