CV-16 Liaoning (001 carrier) Thread II ...News, Views and operations

gelgoog said:

A lot of turbine engines are so called "multi-fuel" engines. One example would be the M1 Abrams tank engine. Which is based on an helicopter engine. The engine might be optimized to run on a certain fuel but it doesn't mean it won't run on some other fuel.
Fighter aircraft typically are more tuned to a certain fuel so they're more finicky about that. Some fighter aircraft engines might have difficulty starting up with the wrong fuel.

The USA typically loads some form of Kerosene on most of it's marine vehicles because it can be shared among nearly every single vehicle in the fleet. Ships, aircraft, and land vehicles. Gasoline vehicles were mostly eliminated from the US Army because of that. You'll even find Diesel powered motorcycles and things like that. The difference between what we typically call Diesel and aviation grade Kerosene is basically one of purity. Aviation grade Kerosene (Jet-A) uses a subset of the hydrocarbons typically found in Diesel fuel. So it's typically more expensive. However typically an engine that runs on one will more or less run with the other. You'll find that a Diesel vehicle will run just fine on Kerosene (it's just more expensive than Diesel), and the opposite is quite often true as well. Especially in things like marine turbine engines.

So, in short, you would typically want to use Diesel on marine turbine engines and land vehicles, because it's more cost effective and only use Kerosene (Jet-A) for the aircraft). However the US Navy and other branches of the US Armed Forces typically just use Kerosene because it simplifies logistics.

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bruceb1959 said:

I recall from the days of my youth when I was interested in Soviet hardware, reading of the 'crude and simple' turbojets employed in cold war era aircraft that could/would run on diesel. At the time I hadnt appreciated from a scientific standpoint how similar diesel was to jet fuel .. so thanks for the 'education'

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kwaigonegin said:

JP 5 is essentially kerosene but higher flashpoint due to differences in hydrocarbon molecules, for safety reason. Quite toxic though.. much more so than gasoline. If you get into the habit of sniffing JP5 you’ll likely have a short lifespan.

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asif iqbal said:

Nice story AFB!!!

Love the unrelated details

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Air Force Brat said:

thanks, he had the fueling cap off on top of the tank, and his nose stuck down in the tank,,, but Kwai, I really had no idea that JP-5 was more toxic than avgas, in fact on the farm we washed our greasy equipment and hands in diesel fuel...

I used to rinse off in the parts cleaner in the shop, but one day, it started giving me problems, and I am very sensitive to hydrochloric acid around batteries, I avoid that like the Plague!

didn't the SR-71 run JP-7? it had very low volatility, in fact on the ramp, those tanks would weep constantly, and when the "Blackbird" would slow down to refuel, it would begin to weep fuel vapor, as the whole airframe was designed with loose tolerances so that when it heated up at cruise, things fit perfectly,,, now this is ALL ANECDOTAL, prolly from an Air Force Magazine article....

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gelgoog said:

JP-7 IIRC has higher density and more resistance to high temperatures. Yes, AFAIK the fuel was used to cool the SR-71 airframe at high velocities. It was so hard to ignite they had to use TEB aka "Green Dragon" to ignite it. It's also used to ignite the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It's highly toxic and hypergolic (i.e. it ignites in exposure to moist air). There were plans in the 1960s to use these Borane based fuels in Mach 3+ aircraft. You can read more about it on Wikipedia:

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