What’s the deal with airplane fuel?
Have you ever wondered if you can you put jet fuel in a car and make it go faster?
Like, a rocket car!
Well, the answer is yes and no, because even though at the core, jet fuel and car fuel
are similar, they are actually so, so different.
Most cars and jets are powered through some sort of combustion.
Cars have an internal combustion engine and jets gas turbine engine.
Which means they both rely on a heat source or explosion to power the engine.
In most cases, this requires some sort of combustible fossil fuel, which of course is
derived from oil.
But that is where the similarities stop.
To understand the differences between jet fuel and car fuel you need to understand oil.
The black slick stuff that comes out of the ground.
It contains aliphatic hydrocarbons.
In other words, molecules of just hydrogen and carbon.
But depending on how many hydrogen and carbon atoms there are, the molecules behave differently.
When a hydrocarbon chain has only one carbon and four hydrogen, it’s super light and
makes methane.
As more atoms are added to the chain, naturally the molecule gets heavier alters its properties,
becoming another gas.
So for instance, two carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms make ethane (C2H6), propane
is C3H8 and butane is C4H10.
The C7 to C11 range make gasoline.
Airplane fuel is derived from much heavier chains, kerosene, in the C12 to C15 range.
These two fuels actually have similar properties but one of the key differences between gasoline
and kerosene is their flash point.
The main reason airplanes use kerosene is safety.
Kerosene has a higher flashpoint then car gas, which means it takes a higher temperature
to ignite kerosene.
This is important when you have a lot of it and it's around a lot of people, like say
a major airport.
Kerosene is also easily transported and is readily available around the world.
Also, kerosene can stay in liquid form longer at low temperatures, which is important when
you’re flying thousands of feet in the air when temperature can reach 34 degrees below
zero Celsius or more.
Now there are two main types of jet fuel depending on where you are in the world, Jet A's and
Jet A-1.
Jet A is available mostly in the US and has a freezing point of −40 °C, while Jet A-1
is used in the rest of the world.
It has a lower freezing point of −47 °C. Frozen jet fuel would be disastrous.
And to make quality jet fuel, additives are injected to help stop things like static build
up, which can create a spark, an anticorrosive agent, a de-icing agent, and even an antimicrobial
agent to stop bacteria and fungus growing and clogging the engine.
Obviously, the gas you put in your car doesn’t need all of this.
The bottom line is, car fuel and jet fuel are made differently from the start, and your
car can’t run on kerosene and doesn’t really need to be prepared for such low temperatures.
Also, jet fuel is super expensive, often over $4 a gallon.
But even after all that, there is one instance jet fuel and one type of car fuel are actually
kind of similar.
Turns out jet fuel is a lot like diesel.
So much so you can actually power a diesel powered truck with it.
(although apparently you might want to add a lubricant).
But if you put it in your regular car, it would be just like putting diesel in it, it
just kind of stalls out, because of the way diesel engines and gasoline engines differ.
Diesel engines compress the fuel at a different ratio than gasoline engines to get the fuel
hot.
So your car’s gasoline engine just won’t get the jet fuel hot enough to spark.
But it still could damage your engine.
BUMMER.