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Posted on 08/09/2007 10:15:10 AM PDT by SZonian
EDWARDS AFB - The Air Force's fleet of B-52s, the nation's oldest active-duty aircraft, was certified Wednesday as the first that can use one of the Air Force's newest innovations: a cleaner-burning, domestically produced synthetic fuel blend. The certification is the culmination of a year-long test program conducted at Edwards, which was visited Wednesday by Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne to thank and congratulate the engineers, pilots and others who worked on the project.
"This is a great day for the United States Air Force," Wynne said, "And another milestone for the Flight Test Center."
Wynne called the B-52 fleet's certification "the tip of the spear for national energy independence."
The synthetic fuel blend is a half-and-half mixture of JP-8, or regular jet fuel, and Fischer-Tropsch, or F-T synthetic fuel, which is derived from natural gas or coal.
Excerpted
(Excerpt) Read more at avpress.com ...
Cheers, SZ
A more accurate description of the fuel is half-synthetic.
Derived from natural gas or coal. I like the sound of that, especially the coal part.
Not as jazzed about the cleaner burning as I am about domestically produced.
Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished....... If you want on or off the DIESEL ”KnOcK” LIST just FReepmail me........This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days......
Classic B-52 coal-burners.
Cool! I was looking for a smoking takeoff photo.
If it works in one jet engine, it will probably work in all of them.
I always wondered about that story driving through the coal region ghost towns of PA on the way to my sons college.
Sounds great, now if they only would bring back the coal fired steam engines on the railroads(cough).
Yeah, the article said if the C-17 can handle it, then commercial craft can too. That is nice to know.
‘Wynne called the B-52 fleet’s certification “the tip of the spear for national energy independence.” ‘
Somebody ask Secretary Wynne to name a country thats ‘energy independent’.
Just one.
(for those playing along at home, there isn’t one, there will never be one, and that goal is ridiculously politically correct with no real world meaning at all)
Yes, does anyone know if BUFFS run on Jet A, or something else?
In any case, this is important strategically, as well as environmentally.
< cough > Do you smoke after sex? < /cough >
I don’t know, I’ve never look.
Me too. I’m so sick of energy dependence when we’re sitting on a continent made out of coal. Should probably leave a hundred miles or so at the coast to act as a seawall.
Well, if you do, you’re doing something wrong. I’d suggest more lube. Many of us don’t generate the as much as we did when we were younger (cue romantic music and closeup of butterfly flapping across the screen)...
Well we certainly don’t want to befoul their air before we nuke them, don’t we?
Glad to see us beginning to use liquified coal for a (very small) part of our fuel needs. Before long, we may even catch up to what the Germans were doing in the 1940’s (while having millions of tons of bombs dropped on their cities, I might add).
Yeah, I know, ours is cleaner burning. So what! Shouldn’t 65 years of technological progress be good for something?
The point I’m making is that we have no particular desire, as a nation, to be largely energy independent - because if we did, we have the coal, shale oil, offshore oil & gas reserves and nuclear material to do it very quickly. No one is serious about this. While this story is good news, it is extremely little and horribly late. When are the government and industry going to wake TF up?
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