Fat Replaces Oil In F-16s

It looks like the military has finally figured out a way to combine Americans' love of french fries with their love of blowing stuff up. The Air Force says all of its 40-plus aircraft models will be able to burn biofuels by 2013, three years ahead of schedule. From the article: "The Army wants 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. The Navy and Marines aim to shift half their energy use from oil, gas and coal by 2020. 'Reliance on fossil fuels is simply too much of a vulnerability for a military organization to have,' U.S. Navy Secretary Raymond Mabus said in an interview. 'We’ve been certifying aircraft on biofuels. We’re doing solar and wind, geothermal, hydrothermal, wave, things like that on our bases.'”

Comments

Still using FAT?

[fph il quozientatore]

Everyone should've switched to NTFS by now...

coal?

[edxwelch]

> The Navy and Marines aim to shift half their energy use from oil, gas and coal by 2020.

Didn't release you could run a F-16 on coal

Re:coal?

[Moheeheeko]

You just have to shovel REALLY fast.

Re:coal?

[DarksouldragonX]

The ones that run on wind power are a pain in the ass to get started.

Re:coal?

[Cyberax]

You can, though not directly by using kerosene from coal gasification plants.

Re:coal?

[PPH]

Signal the boiler room crew. We're going to afterburners.

Can't be ignored any longer

[pspahn]

If military vehicles remain dependent on the same traditional fuel, it will ultimately be the collapse of the US.

I'd never really thought of this, but it makes good sense both militarily and environmentally. Economically, well, it's clear the economic sustainability of the military has never really been important.

Re:Can't be ignored any longer

[immaterial]

This is something that Germany was very aware of in the aftermath or WWI and run-up to WWII. Having your nations military so beholden to outside sources gives others a stranglehold over it. Of course, the same could be said for the nation's economy as a whole...

Re:Can't be ignored any longer

[drinkypoo]

Good thing we proved the technology as Sandia NREL in the 1980s; the conjecture was that the process would be profitable by the time diesel fuel reached $3/gallon, but nobody has spun it up yet. This is possibly due to the fact that the only place you can get enough suitable land cheap enough is managed by the BLM, and you can get permits to mine coal or drill for oil, but heaven help you if you want to build a renewable energy facility.

Re:Can't be ignored any longer

[JustNilt]

The war in the Pacific was started over oil, and turned on fuel supply.

In the end, Japan was using biofuels made from the roots of pine trees, which they had a lot of because the trees had been felled to be burned themselves.

It took 100,000 pine tree stumps to make one tank of gas for a Japanese fighter jet.

Biofuels are an overrated source of energy.

Once the oil begins to run out, heavier-than-air airraft are going to become scarce.

This has all the hallmarks of an urban legend. First of all, the Japanese "fighter jets" were basically nonexistent in WW2, coming too late to enter service. Furthermore, the "100,000 pine tree stumps" isn't quite correct either. For one thing, it's the roots that were (are?) turned into fuel. Now, it may take 100k roots, I have no idea, but I highly doubt it was "stumps". Finally, last I read, this had been a pilot project (no pun intended) only. While technically feasible, the manpower required to convert the pine roots into fuel was determined to be too much of an impact on other programs.

Regardless, this isn't an oil based biofuel, it would have been an ethanol one. Bit of a difference there, I think, though I am not an expert on the matter.

Makes no sense

[MetalliQaZ]

All F-16's use F-100 (or F-110) engines, and without exception they all run on JP-8 fuel. Whatever the Air Force did, you can bet that they didn't change much. The concept that these engines are somehow eco-friendly is absurd, no matter what contributed the hydrocarbons that they are burning. At full afterburner, these engines can burn more than 20,000 pounds of fuel per minute .

Re:Makes no sense

[MetalliQaZ]

hehe, woops. That's pounds per hour.

Re:I don't think the 386 based autopilot can run a

[DragonWriter]

I don't think the 386 based autopilot can run a os that can uses NTFS

Perhaps not, but not because it is 386-based. WinNT 3.x, which featured NTFS, definitely ran on 386-based systems.

Re:Biofuels are not "fat"

[pushing-robot]

From TFA:

The U.S. Air Force is set to certify all of its 40-plus aircraft models to burn fuels derived from waste oils and plants by 2013

The armed forces say they’ve been successful testing fuels produced from sources as diverse as animal fat, frying oils and camelina, an oil-bearing plant that’s relatively drought- and freeze-resistant.

“We can use an almost unlimited number of feedstocks to produce these fuels,” said Braun. “From a performance stand- point you can’t tell the difference whether you’re burning a camelina blend, a tallow blend, or another fuel that’s made up of a bunch of waste greases -- fry grease or seasoning grease.”

And from TFW

Fats may be either solid or liquid at room temperature, depending on their structure and composition. Although the words "oils", "fats", and "lipids" are all used to refer to fats, "oils" is usually used to refer to fats that are liquids at normal room temperature, while "fats" is usually used to refer to fats that are solids at normal room temperature. "Lipids" is used to refer to both liquid and solid fats, along with other related substances, usually in a medical or biochemical context. The word "oil" is also used for any substance that does not mix with water and has a greasy feel, such as petroleum (or crude oil), heating oil, and essential oils, regardless of its chemical structure.

The confusing point is that "oil" is a very generic term. They're switching from using fuel derived from petroleum (which is an "oil" but definitely not fat) to fuel derived from various renewable sources (many of which are oils and most of which are fats).