Unleaded AV Fuel

drgwentzel

drgwentzel

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Flyers,

I spoke with a friend's son by phone the other day. This gentleman works for the FAA and one of his jobs is to do studies and work in some way with the switch to unleaded fuel from 100LL.

As part of the study they went to Van Nuys Airport and did air, water and soil samples for lead. They picked Van Nuys because it is the world's busiest GA airport and figured this should be the worst place on Earth for lead accumulation related to GA. He explained that the levels of lead found were so small as to be negligible to human or wild life health concerns. His opinion was that the lead being given off by the relatively small GA fleet can not and will not harm us or the environment and this move to unleaded fuel is purely for political correctness, for show, and to shut up the EPA and voicetress environmental groups. The study, it seems, was not done to try and change or effect the move to unleaded fuel; that's a done deal. It seems it was done purely for informational purposes.

Any thoughts on the accuracy of his statements and opinions?

Gene Wentzel - Cessna Cardinal RG
 
Where will you find higher levels of ionizing radiation?

A. Outside a Nuclear power plant.
B. Outside a coal-fed power plant.

PS - don't tell Senator Byrd I asked this question.
 
TMetzinger said:
Where will you find higher levels of ionizing radiation?

A. Outside a Nuclear power plant.
B. Outside a coal-fed power plant.

PS - don't tell Senator Byrd I asked this question.
Click to expand...

Outside the coal plant. There's a fair amount of Thorium and Uranium in coal...
 
I'm no expert in airborne pollutants (or in anything terrestrial, actually), but a good friend of mine is, and I sent her an email asking if she knew anything about lead from aircraft piston engines. She said that as far as she was aware, the problem hasn't been seriously studied. She did mention that garbage burning is thought to contribute to airborne lead (elevated lead levels around Mexico City are attributed to this). Contrails are the big environmental concern related to aircraft, she says.

Given the relatively low volume of avgas burned, though, I wouldn't be all that surprised if a thorough study of the mater concluded there was very little harm from 100LL. I could imagine that even at a place like Van Nuys, more automotive fuel is burned in a given day than avgas on the airport property. (I'm just pulling that out of thin air, though).

I'd caution, though, against thinking about the problem in simplistic terms. Airborne pollutants are extremely complex, and the deposition, migration, and destruction or removal of various particulates or chemicals is every bit as complicated and unpredictable as any other atmospheric phenomenon. I don't know the details of what your friend did (and even if I did, I lack the expertise to judge them) but I suspect that it would take a great deal of work to really get a handle on how much lead GA really puts into the atmosphere, and where it goes. Sounds like a couple of graduate student theses could probably get a handle on the situation, though. :D
 
Ah yes, but never fear - neither studies nor science or empirical evidence will deter these tree huggers in keeping their appointed rounds... Lead in gas is evil and WILL be banned...
As far as the young man working for the FAA he may want to keep a low profile because his report will be counter to the PC mandate - not a situation inclined to promotion or longevity...

denny-o
 
EPA took a very anti-lead stance around 1972. Since lead in the blood affects pregnant women and children at relatively low concentrations, it's not too hard to sell that stance politically.

Leaded aviation fuel will go away, no doubt it.
 
Dr. O said:
Lead in gas is evil and WILL be banned...
Click to expand...

Well, it is a poison, and we know that burning leaded gas puts some quantity of it in to the atmosphere. The question isn't if it's bad, the question is, how bad? The default position that lead should be removed from things we burn is not an irrational one. I agree, though, that before we do anything drastic, some more thorough research in to the problem should be done.

I also agree that it isn't likely to be done.
 
chucky said:
Well, it is a poison, and we know that burning leaded gas puts some quantity of it in to the atmosphere. The question isn't if it's bad, the question is, how bad? The default position that lead should be removed from things we burn is not an irrational one
Click to expand...


It is when it fails to consider the human body is exposed to all sorts of naturally occurring toxins and radioactive particles as a consequence of living on Earth.
 
Gasoline is a poison. Try drinking it, let me know what happens. Leaded or unleaded.
 
Um, who cares! I don't care if 100LL is good for you or not (and we know lead's not good for you, delivery methods be damned..), it's expensive and the economies of scales are keeping it that way. Whether the phasing out of said fuel is due to irrational environmental concerns or bona fide ones matters not one iota. That we're holding on to 60 year old engine specs flown by a collective of 30-40 year old aluminum rat traps is the real crux of the problem. Aviation engine economics go away? Arguments about lead all of a sudden goes POOF, even among the "lead is FINE...." crowd around here. Talk about taking a tangent with the lead issue......

GA has a similar attitude to some of the more underfunded military airframes in the AF and Navy. "Hold on to that old duct tape solution, we're just a {insert unrealistic time frame here} away from the replacement".... And the decades click by and we're still flying around in glorified Wright Flyers. Take my community for instance (the B-52H). Talk about doing more with less. It's simply appalling what we take up in the air every week. Filing /I is simply an indignity at this point. 20K/hr cruise burn? Really? Any semblance of an EFIS? no. RVSM? No. Coupled A/P? No. Terminal IFR GPS? No. SELCAL? No. TCAS? No. A new 172 has better avionic capabilities than an all-weather bomber. Awesome. It has nothing to do with technology, it's got to do with money and politics. Same is true for GA. It's not whether or not lead will kill you, it's whether or not we're in a position to rattle the cage loose and move on to the 21st century, even is it means it disloging Lyco from their cartel postion and into the real world.

Some of the previous posters are right. 100LL is on its way out, and we should rejoice that. It doesn't have to default to a 100 UL solution that could feasibly be just as expensive, it can open up a market of JEt-A/diesel use or mogas use, both with much better economies of scale from a production and distribution standpoint. These old spec engines got to go; even if I could, I'm not sure I'd want to lug around an O/IO-whatever twenty years from now (and the airframe it came with)...That's just more of the insane "stick with it, the solution is right around the corner" kick the can forward mantra.

Now who wants to go lick some paint and put their money quite literally where their mouth is? :D
 
TMetzinger said:
Where will you find higher levels of ionizing radiation?

A. Outside a Nuclear power plant.
B. Outside a coal-fed power plant.

PS - don't tell Senator Byrd I asked this question.
Click to expand...

Trapper John said:
Outside the coal plant. There's a fair amount of Thorium and Uranium in coal...
Click to expand...

Let's not forget the Carbon 14 in the coal. :D
 
hindsight2020 said:
Some of the previous posters are right. 100LL is on its way out, and we should rejoice that. It doesn't have to default to a 100 UL solution that could feasibly be just as expensive, it can open up a market of JEt-A/diesel use or mogas use, both with much better economies of scale from a production and distribution standpoint. These old spec engines got to go; even if I could, I'm not sure I'd want to lug around an O/IO-whatever twenty years from now (and the airframe it came with)...That's just more of the insane "stick with it, the solution is right around the corner" kick the can forward mantra.
Click to expand...

Many of these "old spec engines" can perform just fine on a wide variety of fuels, efficiently and dependably.

FWIW, the Wrights had to address every aerodynamic problem before they could achieve slow speed flight. Who cares if it's 100+ year old technology -- it works.
 
Trapper John said:
C-14 concentration in coal is somewhere around 1 part per trillion, IIRC. Not too much of a concern...
Click to expand...
Not too much of a concern if you are handling a lump of coal, or standing by a coal pile...I've personally seen a chunk of chimney brick from a coal plant that was hot by a geiger counter. It was a long time ago so I forget the reading...but it was MUCH "hotter" than background. The counts all ran together., instead of being individual "clicks". The C14 preferentially accumulates- that extra 2 atomic mass units does make a difference!

How much C14 gets into the atmosphere where most of us can actually get in contact with it? I really don't know.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Not too much of a concern if you are handling a lump of coal, or standing by a coal pile...I've personally seen a chunk of chimney brick from a coal plant that was hot by a geiger counter. It was a long time ago so I forget the reading...but it was MUCH "hotter" than background. The counts all ran together., instead of being individual "clicks".
Click to expand...

If you were using a standard G-M tube you were measuring beta decay of something...or did you have a scintillation detector?

How much C14 gets into the atmosphere where most of us can actually get in contact with it? I really don't know.
Click to expand...

I don't know either, but since C14 is so rare compared to C12, it can't be much at all.
 
EvilEagle said:
Was this a joke? What are the environmental concerns with contrails?
Click to expand...

Nope. AuntPeggy's link discusses the potential impacts for climate change (note that the net effect could be warming or cooling - it's not known). It also may affect precipitation. The idea is that more nucleation sights leads to smaller droplet sizes, which suppresses precipitation. This isn't my science, so I can't defend it, I'm just reporting what I was told. As far as the groundings go, I don't think they were long enough to really matter, and the most recent one involved spewing lots of particulates into the upper atmosphere independent of the jets, so it would be hard to disentangle, I imagine.

Ted DuPuis said:
Gasoline is a poison. Try drinking it, let me know what happens. Leaded or unleaded.
Click to expand...

I think I'll choose not to. I don't have the same option with the air I breathe, though.

dmccormack said:
It is when it fails to consider the human body is exposed to all sorts of naturally occurring toxins and radioactive particles as a consequence of living on Earth.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. Which is why I'd like to see some systematic investigation of how much of a problem lead in avgas really is, before we start expending resources to fix the problem - since there may well be bigger environmental problems to be dealt with.
 
hindsight2020 said:
A new 172 has better avionic capabilities than an all-weather bomber. Awesome.
Click to expand...

A new 172 has better avionics than an all-weather nuclear bomber. As I understand it, the G1000 suite is worth about $60K, not a big ticket for an upgrade to a big old bomber carrying such a responsibility.

Dan
 
Dan Thomas said:
Doesn't some coal contain absorbed Radon as well?

Dan
Click to expand...

Trapper John said:
I don't think Radon is absorbed by coal so much as it is generated by the decay of Uranium in the coal.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the concentration of uranium in coal is low to non-existant...isn't coal made up of dead plants that were heated and squeezed under pressure to form a rock-like substance?

I'm sure there's some there...but I would look elsewhere than coal for a decent concentration of uranium.
 
dmccormack said:
Siphoning during the 70s, were we...?
Click to expand...

Yes, I did. Hell, it was even leaded. Come to think of it, I remember not wearing seat belts and routinely riding for cross-state rides in the back of a pickup. Just a few of the things modern kids will never have memories of - yet somehow my generation survived.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
I'm pretty sure the concentration of uranium in coal is low to non-existant...isn't coal made up of dead plants that were heated and squeezed under pressure to form a rock-like substance?

I'm sure there's some there...but I would look elsewhere than coal for a decent concentration of uranium.
Click to expand...

Rule of thumb, you can figure on finding 1 to 1.5 ppm U and 3 to 3.5 ppm Th in western low-sulfur coal. Doesn't sound like much, but a big coal fired power plant will burn in the thousands of tons of coal per day, so in a year's time, a lot of radioactive material gets chucked into the air.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Doesn't some coal contain absorbed Radon as well?

Dan
Click to expand...

True, but not a lot in comparason to other geologic features.

Trapper John said:
I don't think Radon is absorbed by coal so much as it is generated by the decay of Uranium in the coal.
Click to expand...

True

Cap'n Jack said:
I'm pretty sure the concentration of uranium in coal is low to non-existant...isn't coal made up of dead plants that were heated and squeezed under pressure to form a rock-like substance?

I'm sure there's some there...but I would look elsewhere than coal for a decent concentration of uranium.
Click to expand...

Thought coal came from Santa Claus, reserved for those "bad" girls and boys. :D

Google "Reading Prong" for a more detailed explaination of uranium containing rocks. Actually a fairly common element in the earth's crust.

Gary
 
drgwentzel said:
Flyers,

I spoke with a friend's son by phone the other day. This gentleman works for the FAA and one of his jobs is to do studies and work in some way with the switch to unleaded fuel from 100LL.

As part of the study they went to Van Nuys Airport and did air, water and soil samples for lead. They picked Van Nuys because it is the world's busiest GA airport and figured this should be the worst place on Earth for lead accumulation related to GA. He explained that the levels of lead found were so small as to be negligible to human or wild life health concerns. His opinion was that the lead being given off by the relatively small GA fleet can not and will not harm us or the environment and this move to unleaded fuel is purely for political correctness, for show, and to shut up the EPA and voicetress environmental groups. The study, it seems, was not done to try and change or effect the move to unleaded fuel; that's a done deal. It seems it was done purely for informational purposes.

Any thoughts on the accuracy of his statements and opinions?

Gene Wentzel - Cessna Cardinal RG
Click to expand...

OMG! I've been right all these years. Take that, everyone who said I was being bad by dumping fuel samples on the ramp.

/me dances/sings "I'm right, you're wrong, I'm right, you're wrong!"

Logic and science finally meet. Now, if we can get some useful study about second hand smoke going.....
 
Dan Thomas said:
A new 172 has better avionics than an all-weather nuclear bomber. As I understand it, the G1000 suite is worth about $60K, not a big ticket for an upgrade to a big old bomber carrying such a responsibility.

Dan
Click to expand...

It's amazing how cheap avionics are for civilian aircraft. You would think that we could get a G1000 for $60k, but with the way government contracts work, you'd end up paying $280k each with a $1M maintenance contract and 2 years of flight test to ensure that it doesn't interfere with current systems. :mad2:

I've flown to approx 30 countries in the F-15 and we don't even have a GPS. Tacan, ILS, ring lazer INS is it! (and we still dial in freq's manually!) Even the F-22 isn't RVSM - and it's only because the USAF doesn't have the money to pay the fee for the certification.

A handheld 396 or similar is a H U G E upgrade to take on trips for us!
 
EvilEagle said:
I've flown to approx 30 countries in the F-15 and we don't even have a GPS. Tacan, ILS, ring lazer INS is it! (and we still dial in freq's manually!) Even the F-22 isn't RVSM - and it's only because the USAF doesn't have the money to pay the fee for the certification.

A handheld 396 or similar is a H U G E upgrade to take on trips for us!
Click to expand...

Isn't it awesome that the airplane flies without all that stuff?

I'm not surprised that fighters aren't RVSM certified. Fighters
don't typically fly most of their hours flying oceanic routes, right?
The trash haulers and gas passers get real benefits from RVSM,
not so much the fighters, yes?
 
TknoFlyer said:
Yes, I did. Hell, it was even leaded. Come to think of it, I remember not wearing seat belts and routinely riding for cross-state rides in the back of a pickup. Just a few of the things modern kids will never have memories of - yet somehow my generation survived.
Click to expand...

When I was in grade school we used to ride around in Long Island in back of my friend's F-150. That was fun, I miss it.
 
TknoFlyer said:
So... Do you? :)
Click to expand...

Yes, our operations group bought two 396s for use in the F-15 for cross country flights - they even pay for the XM weather! It comes in handy when you are cruising at .95 mach and they say "cleared direct BFE intersection" - it's always a crush to the ego when you have to ask for a heading or coordinates...
 
Bob Noel said:
Isn't it awesome that the airplane flies without all that stuff?

I'm not surprised that fighters aren't RVSM certified. Fighters
don't typically fly most of their hours flying oceanic routes, right?
The trash haulers and gas passers get real benefits from RVSM,
not so much the fighters, yes?
Click to expand...

Yes, it's great that the airplane is a real stick and rudder airplane - no computer system in the flight controls (big advantage in dog fights) and that you have to do real navigation. The problem we have is when we are deploying places without a tanker. For instance, going from Tyndall to Nellis (Vegas) for Red Flag, we get great gas mileage in the high 30's - can't fly there because we are non RVSM. We are a bit too heavy to take off and go right to 43k' without using afterburner (depending on configuration). So, we have to plan everything at 28k' in case ATC never has a hole to get us up above RVSM.

Doesn't sound like too much of a pain, but many times it is the difference in going direct and having to stop somewhere for fuel. Our jets are old and when they land, sometimes they like where they are and don't want to go anywhere else without some wrenching from our maintenance guys.

If we are crossing the pond, we are with a tanker and we get an ALTRAV that's usually in the mid-high 20's. I've refueled as high as 35k', but it's not fun at all, much safer down in the thicker air.
 
EvilEagle said:
Doesn't sound like too much of a pain, but many times it is the difference in going direct and having to stop somewhere for fuel. Our jets are old and when they land, sometimes they like where they are and don't want to go anywhere else without some wrenching from our maintenance guys.
Click to expand...

I suppose the trick is to plan the fuel stops for places that wouldn't
be too much of a hardship if the aircraft needed maintenance.
<wink wink nudge nudge>
 
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