fuel

While the world of piston general aviation wrings its collective hands over an unleaded replacement for 100LL, the turbine market is caught up in a vast, breaking wave of biofuel activity. Even though heavily subsidized biodiesel is already finding a niche market, it looks like demand from the airlines, but especially from the military, is driving an explosion of so-called advanced biofuels development. As we reported in the December 2010 issue of Aviation Consumer, the ASTM approvals for bio-derived turbine fuels are already in place or soon will be.

“Governments view of the economy,” wrote the oft-missed Ronald Reagan, “could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” The last nugget of that quote, government subsidies, accurately encapsulates the alternative fuel industry and especially ethanol. Yet it was Reagan, that stalwart of small government and free enterprise, who signed bills extending loan guarantees for the then-nascent ethanol industry. What does this have to do with aviation? We may be about to do it again in the name of preventing aviation from fouling the air with carbon dioxide and turning the planet into a hot house that will melt the polar icecaps.

As general aviation moves bumpily along toward a replacement fuel for 100LL, there’s a backlash brewing. Why, ask the owners of low-compression, low-output engines, do we have to settle on a single fuel? Why cant there be two unleaded fuels, a less expensive one for some users and a high-octane version for the rest? And why cant one of those fuels be mogas, which enjoyed wide popularity during the 1980s? Two-fuel systems are in place throughout western Europe, although not every airport has dual fueling. Some-usually smaller grass and club fields-have only one fuel available, while others have a 91/96 (the equivalent of 94UL) and conventional 100LL. A handful even have three fuels, since mogas has a tiny presence in Europe.

Your recent article titled, “LED Landing Lights: Worth the Expense,” was a disturbing article to me. In it, the author suggests to consumers that they can simply replace their current landing lights with LED lights without any additional approval. This could not be further from the truth. In order to install any component, light bulb or otherwise, on a U.S. registered certificated aircraft, it must be shown that the part, when installed on the given aircraft, still meets the requirements of FAR 23.

Money talks, goes the standard street wisdom, and [expletive of choice] walks. That more than anything describes the state of play when comparing the alternative jet fuel industry to the rather more stalled effort to find an unleaded replacement for 100LL. This should be no surprise. Thanks to serious industry support from the military, turbine engine manufacturers, the airlines and even the FAA, the alternative jet fuel industry is on a virtual gallop to have in place the regulatory approval standards to allow use of bio-derived or synthetic jet fuels by next year or at least 2012. The economics remain untested so far, but the regulatory hurdles havent proven as difficult or at least as time-consuming as they have for finding a 100LL replacement. Is there a lesson here?

There to now with avgas? Following a flurry of activity at EAA AirVenture-briefings and meetings, mainly-has the flag inched forward toward a replacement for 100LL? In short, its hard to tell. If there’s substantive progress, its occurring behind closed doors, although the venue has changed. By early September, the FAA revealed a generally positive test result on a 150-hour test cell run with Swifts UL102 fuel, a variant tof several blends it has developed. Meanwhile, General Aviation Modifications Inc. still has before the FAA a request to approve its G100UL via STC.

Not 10 seconds after Wilbur cracked up the Flyer that cold December morning at Kitty Hawk, Orville must have asked, “whats this gonna cost me?” And weve been asking ever since, never more so than now as the future of 100LL hangs in the uncertain balance between readily available and extinction. As potential replacements loom hazily on the horizon-and frankly, there arent many of them-its fair to start asking what they might cost. Or to cynically turn the question on its head: Does anyone have the first clue?

To visit Lycoming and Continental, as we did last month, is to step into a disconnected world that almost qualifies as an alternate reality. And no, were not resurrecting the hackneyed complaint that the engine companies are out of touch with the wants and needs of their customers. Its the other way around. While the world of piston GA drifts along in business-as-usual mode, the engine makers see a looming cliff defined by the extinction of 100LL and no one is tapping the brakes. Panic may be too strong, but if no universal fuel replacement emerges two years from now, it may be too mild.

Compared to piston aviation fuels research, mushroom farming is a daylight operation. Thats not to say the fuel work is secretive, its just that it goes on more or less constantly, but nothing meaningful seems to come of it. At least you can have the mushrooms on your salad. Against this backdrop of apparent non-action comes yet another entrant into the 100LL replacement sweepstakes, this one called G100UL. This new fuel comes at the problem from far out in left field from a company known more for burning fuel than creating it: General Aviation Modifications, Inc., the Ada, Oklahoma, mod house that shook up the hidebound world of aircraft engine research with its radical ideas on lean-of-peak operation and an almost religious conviction that turbonormalized engines are better than turbocharged engines. With G100UL, GAMI is again running against the grain and, to a degree, challenging the accepted notion that before a new fuel can be widely tested, it has to be certified. But, says GAMIs George Braly, thats backwards. There’s no point in reducing entire forests to pulp to certify a fuel if refineries arent interested in or cant build the stuff profitably, thus GAMIs idea is to field its new developmental fuel to a select fleet under an STC while simultaneously pursuing regulatory approval. To a degree, that will test the economics, too, since production will have to rise to at least the pilot-plant level to supply a small fleet experiment.

The worry about 100LL is less when it will disappear than how many more stories you’ll have to endure predicting its imminent demise. We started in 1984, first warning of the air quality issue followed by the impending loss of the lead additives, which we predicted was just around the corner. Next, it was the refiners-there wouldnt be enough to make the stuff. Then all the states would run leaded fuel out of town or the truckers wouldnt truck it. It was always something. Yet, there it still is: Genuine 100LL at your local airport. Its at least available, even if it isn’t cheap. But we swear, the stuff is going to go away and this time we mean it. The latest threat is simple economics: Declining demand may soon render avgas not worth the bother of blending, at least for some refiners. (Check back in 2015 to see how this prediction works out.) Next up as a would-be replacement is an intriguing new product that surfaced last summer called Swift Fuel-Swift being the name of the start-up company that proposes to develop the process to produce it. While other pretenders to the 100LL throne have come up short octane wise or just havent proven practical, the initial take on Swift Fuel is just the opposite. Initial tests show that it has the octane punch required to keep detonation-prone turbocharged engines from exploding, it burns cleanly, has no toxic lead and-get this-its a renewable biofuel that the inventors say can be made for $2 a gallon. If this sounds like one of those too-good-to-be-true business schemes pitched on the cable channels, it might not be. Swift Fuel is a serious industrial research program whose claims at least pass the initial smell test. But there are some niggling details that, if not show stoppers, could sprinkle a little sand in the gears.

The more I learn about the biofuel and alternative fuel industries, the more depressed I get. But this doesnt necessarily apply to Swift Fuel, a proposed replacement for 100LL, which is analyzed on page 12 of this issue. Stay with me to follow the reasoning. Any sane person who reads much about the history and economics of the U.S. ethanol industry could only conclude one thing: Its nothing but corn state lunacy. The entire industry is heavily subsidized and is really nothing but agricultural subsidies by another name. With oil prices in the tank, ethanols high cost of production isn’t remotely competitive with gasoline and unless oil hits $200 a barrel, it probably never will be. The notion that ethanol is somehow greener that gasoline has been pretty we’ll shot to hell, too. Corn ethanols energy balance-the amount of energy input compared to energy gained-is generally accepted as a pathetic 1.3.

Start with a heaped serving of ignorance, add equal measures of industrial inertia and mediocre engineering, add a dash of petulant, not-invented-here intransigence and you’ll have a lucid understanding of how the airplane industry looked at the mundane world of engine management 10 years ago. Or, more accurately, how it looked at engine leaning. Five years before that, General Aviation Modifications, Inc. had begun marketing its calibrated fuel injectors to wide market acceptance. Along with that, came the old-new idea of running engines lean of peak EGTs to save fuel and tame high CHTs. Reaction from the entrenched interests was harsh. you’ll fry the cylinders, said Lycoming. you’ll fry the valves, said mechanics. you’ll fry everything, said some engine shops. What was needed was a controlled experiment whereby a fleet of airplanes running lean of peak could be carefully monitored. Yes, we know the orginal Piper Malibu specified lean of peak, too. But its engine service history was spotty, probably for reasons not related to leaning. When it introduced the SR22 TN in late 2006, Cirrus provided a better lab rat because every SR22 has sophisticated engine data monitoring. Here was an airplane whose POH required lean-of-peak operation. It was nothing if not a bold stroke.