F-15 Flies on Alternative Jet Engine Fuel
Using a 50-50 mixture of JP-8 jet fuel and a natural gas-based synthetic fuel, an F-15 Strike Eagle flew high above Robins Air Force Base in Georgia this week. One of the pilots for the test, Maj. Dan Badia, is quoted as saying it was just another day at the office.
He said, “You could have had JP-8 in there and I wouldn’t have known the difference.”
The test flight involved engineers from the 830th Aircraft Sustainment Group, who maintain the 561st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, and pilots from the 339th Flight Test Certification office.
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The aircraft, according to F-15 fuels engineer Ryan Mead, functioned within the same range as it would if it had used JP-8. Because of the test flights, Mead expects the jet to be certified on the fuel.
The test was part of a direction from the Secretary of the Air Force, to certify the entire Air Force fleet on synthetic fuel by 2011.
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Image: www.dailyaviator.com/ ?p=1349
man, it’s a good thing there’s so much natural gas underneath the rest of the Muslim world… and Russia.
Is that a bio fuel? It amazes me that the organizations with the some of the best engineers and plenty of resources for funding take the smallest steps toward change. I look forward to the day when the US Airforce gets bold!
Syntetic fuel is not a biofuel in an of itself. If the synthetic fuel is made from biomass or any direct bio energy carrier such as biogas it is. If it’s made from coal, oil or natural gas is just as fossil as the coal, oil or NG.
The beatuy of it however is that most processes for making synthetic fuel can use any source of hydrocarbons. So if you start the research using natural gas as a hydrocarbon source and test the fuel then the switch to a biomass based source of hydrocarbons is a small step.
Another small step in the right direction taken.. with emphasis on small in this case.