rob1977 said...

japie said...

Simondo said...

japie said...

Yes, and when jet fuel starts to run out we will get one.

Funny thing that! Jet fuel actually comes from 2 waste products. One of the products is extremely nasty, add in product 2 in a certain way, and hey presto, you have premium jet fuel! In dollar terms it is kind of like 1+1=10! Bingo.

It has a complex range of different Hydrocarbons though... Hat's off to the Chemical Engineer's who worked it out though. Jet Fuel Refining is semi complex, and the wrong ratio's of 1+2 can weaken steel pipelines within hours... as in eat out steel.

This is Product 1 (HFA - nastier than you can care to imagine, but controllable, and easily contained in normal circumstances, when everything goes to plan), and Product 2 is isobutane which is essentially propylene and butylene. Product 1 is the catalyst!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid (HFA)

I thought it was Kerosene? We have a kero heater and a mate who works at the airport said she could get us Avgas which would work in the heater.

Sounds like we should not be using the concoction you are describing, may end up in orbit!

Fuel for piston-engine powered aircraft (usually a high-octane gasoline known as avgas) has a low flash point to improve its ignition characteristics. Turbine engines can operate with a wide range of fuels, and jet-aircraft engines typically use fuels with higher flash points, which are less flammable and therefore safer to transport and handle. The first jet fuels were based on kerosene or a gasoline-kerosene mix, and most jet fuels are still kerosene-based. It is blended with other chemicals to change the flash point and freeze points which make it safer to transport and handle. It is not made up of 2 waste products.

Wrong and wrong.

Jet fuel is a narrower cut kerosine. It is the least refined of all the fuels except fuel oil for ships. By "narrow cut" i mean it has a slightly higher initial boiling point than kero and a slightly lower end boiling point (Which is for the flash and freeze as you said above). It had had no other treatment other than filtering and a process called "merox" - which converts the sulfur from a smelly form to a non smelly form. It's not a blend.

As for the other fuel mentioned earlier - Avgas is also known as alkylate. Its made by mixing olefinic butane with isobutane and mixing with a very nasty acid catalyst to make 2-4-4-trimethylpentane - otherwise known as the molecule that they reference 100 octane to. It's also in every grade of unleaded petrol you buy at the bowser. Don't worry, none of the acid makes it through, but if the 40 odd Tonnes of acid at a refinery was to leak out, it would likely kill hundreds.

Mobydisc said...

If its worth doing, let a private company do it. Let a private company take the risk. If the risk is too high it won't be done. Why should taxpayer money be spent on something that will benefit some at the expense of others?

If they built a very fast train link from Melbourne to Sydney at public expense for example, how would that benefit a taxpayer out at Dubbo or down at Hobart? The airlines will suffer. The truck drivers will suffer. Greyhound Bus will suffer.

If any government assistance is needed then the best way to do it would be to say to any private company willing to do it they would get a tax holiday on any profit they make from the enterprise for 20 years or more.

That's right! Let private enterprise do it.

Let's extend that to all infrastructure and services. If it is worth doing, then surely private enterprise will see the benefit.

Let's do it to health-care! I hear the US uses this technique successfully [}:)]

mattyjee said...

rob1977 said...

japie said...

Simondo said...

japie said...

Yes, and when jet fuel starts to run out we will get one.

Funny thing that! Jet fuel actually comes from 2 waste products. One of the products is extremely nasty, add in product 2 in a certain way, and hey presto, you have premium jet fuel! In dollar terms it is kind of like 1+1=10! Bingo.

It has a complex range of different Hydrocarbons though... Hat's off to the Chemical Engineer's who worked it out though. Jet Fuel Refining is semi complex, and the wrong ratio's of 1+2 can weaken steel pipelines within hours... as in eat out steel.

This is Product 1 (HFA - nastier than you can care to imagine, but controllable, and easily contained in normal circumstances, when everything goes to plan), and Product 2 is isobutane which is essentially propylene and butylene. Product 1 is the catalyst!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid (HFA)

I thought it was Kerosene? We have a kero heater and a mate who works at the airport said she could get us Avgas which would work in the heater.

Sounds like we should not be using the concoction you are describing, may end up in orbit!

Fuel for piston-engine powered aircraft (usually a high-octane gasoline known as avgas) has a low flash point to improve its ignition characteristics. Turbine engines can operate with a wide range of fuels, and jet-aircraft engines typically use fuels with higher flash points, which are less flammable and therefore safer to transport and handle. The first jet fuels were based on kerosene or a gasoline-kerosene mix, and most jet fuels are still kerosene-based. It is blended with other chemicals to change the flash point and freeze points which make it safer to transport and handle. It is not made up of 2 waste products.

Wrong and wrong.

Jet fuel is a narrower cut kerosine. It is the least refined of all the fuels except fuel oil for ships. By "narrow cut" i mean it has a slightly higher initial boiling point than kero and a slightly lower end boiling point (Which is for the flash and freeze as you said above). It had had no other treatment other than filtering and a process called "merox" - which converts the sulfur from a smelly form to a non smelly form. It's not a blend.

As for the other fuel mentioned earlier - Avgas is also known as alkylate. Its made by mixing olefinic butane with isobutane and mixing with a very nasty acid catalyst to make 2-4-4-trimethylpentane - otherwise known as the molecule that they reference 100 octane to. It's also in every grade of unleaded petrol you buy at the bowser. Don't worry, none of the acid makes it through, but if the 40 odd Tonnes of acid at a refinery was to leak out, it would likely kill hundreds.

That's pretty much what I said. HFA is the nasty catalyst that is mixed with isobutane.

^^^ i think the collapse of the soviet union has already proved you wrong.

japie said...
I thought it was Kerosene? We have a kero heater and a mate who works at the airport said she could get us Avgas which would work in the heater.

You're almost right about the jet fuel. It comes off the "cracker" between diesel and kero. It's actually what we used to buy as heating oil. When we used to use oil heating, part of the fine print on the form I used to sign was that I promised not to use it as aviation fuel. In the RAAF the 1st alternative fuel if the real stuff isn't available is (or at least was when I was in) diesel.

As for AVGAS, as someone else has stated, that's petrol for piston engined aircraft. When I was in the RAAF we used AVTUR for jet aircraft. There were also AVTAG, used by the Yanks and AVCAT, used by the navy for carrier based aircraft and could be used in both turbine and piston engines. I believe that both civvies and military now use the same stuff and call it Jet-A1,

Jet turbines will run on almost any combustible liquid, and, unless things have drastically changed the production heating oil is still just as simple as it always was. The quality control is very strict though.

We in Newcastle live on the end of the Central Coast line and I will more often than not opt for a train trip to Sydney or the south coast by train. It is very cheap, quite scenic and I can read or sleep but it is slow. It is also statistically safer by far than road.

The carriages are more often than not virtually empty except in rush hour and it has always had me flumoxed why it is that we don't think outside the square. Most Newcastle to Central trains consist of eight carriages. Anyone who has seen them will appreciate the weight of the whole thing. The energy required to scoot them up and down the line must be astronomical, particularly when you take into account that more often than not they are well below their full capacity.

It occurred to me one day that you could revolutionise the system at the same time as making it econmical by reducing the actual size of the train down to one carriage and adapting the carriages to enable them to drive on the road. The railways already have an astonishing array of machines that move up and down the lines including cars with retractable rail wheels. It would not take a rocket scientist to design a coach/bus that could achieve speeds of 150 ks per hour on rail. Less weight more efficient braking. Lots of them and lots more jobs and less conjestion on the roads.

There are endless kilometers of unused lines throughout Australia which are capable of carrying traffic highly efficiently and it is frightening to think of the time effort and money that has gone into it seeing it left derelict.