3 ms·

The only place aviation uses leaded gas is in the small, piston engine part of the market that represents primary training or hobbyist/personal transportation f

The only place aviation uses leaded gas is in the small, piston engine part of the market that represents primary training or hobbyist/personal transportation flying. In those cases, it's more like engine designs are 70 or 80 years behind current designs; and oftentimes the actual aircraft are not much younger. There's no lead in jet fuel, and I'm just not exactly sure what you mean by aviation being "behind" in fuels in that respect. What's the leading edge supposed to be, in gas turbine technology, other than essentially kerosene?

PaulHoule 5y ago
Jet A is just fine in the context that you are making it from crude oil and you don’t mind the CO2 emissions. If you want to make carbon neutral jet fuel based on biomass or direct captured CO2 on the other hand, kero is terribly hard to synthesize. Back in the bad old days politically isolated countries such as Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa built expensive factories to make gasoline and diesel from coal using the same kind of chemistry that the authors of that paper are using. Even then the economics were so bad it was an act of desperation and nobody would be attempting to synthesize hydrocarbons for ground transportation today because we have batteries, fuel cells, methane, alcohol and other fuels that can be bio based or synthesized more easily. The Jet A problem is different from the leaded avgas problem but it comes from the same root that if your engine stalls out because of a fuel problem (say water separates out, freezes, clogs your fuel lines and all the engines fail) you have to hurry and find a place to land pretty quick, whereas if it happens to your car it is not so bad. There’s that any and also an unwillingness to make aviators upgrade their hardware (look at the 5G vs altimeters fight.)

3 ms·

The only place aviation uses leaded gas is in the small, piston engine part of the market that represents primary training or hobbyist/personal transportation f

by NovemberWhiskey 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago
Jet A is just fine in the context that you are making it from crude oil and you don’t mind the CO2 emissions. If you want to make carbon neutral jet fuel based on biomass or direct captured CO2 on the other hand, kero is terribly hard to synthesize. Back in the bad old days politically isolated countries such as Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa built expensive factories to make gasoline and diesel from coal using the same kind of chemistry that the authors of that paper are using. Even then the economics were so bad it was an act of desperation and nobody would be attempting to synthesize hydrocarbons for ground transportation today because we have batteries, fuel cells, methane, alcohol and other fuels that can be bio based or synthesized more easily. The Jet A problem is different from the leaded avgas problem but it comes from the same root that if your engine stalls out because of a fuel problem (say water separates out, freezes, clogs your fuel lines and all the engines fail) you have to hurry and find a place to land pretty quick, whereas if it happens to your car it is not so bad. There’s that any and also an unwillingness to make aviators upgrade their hardware (look at the 5G vs altimeters fight.)