Tau ... It's been 1995 since I worked at the airport, but i think I'm still up to date ...✔
99.99% of fuel for jet aircraft in Australia is Jet A1.
It's just kerosene with a lower smoke point, so it gets a bit more refining at the time of manufacturing, but there can be a cross over point where they're nearly the same.
Mostly, a biocide is added to stop the 'bug' from growing...
There is a chemical name for the biocide additive for the 'bug' but where I was we just used the term 'biocide' ...✔
I have sent 20 litre drums of biocide to New Guinea a few times by ship, as hotter climates can get the 'bug' easier than colder climates in storage.
For military situations, they add an anti-freeze for when the aircraft fly at high altitudes ... the Jet A1 can freeze up as you noted and the jets can crash.
The generic term for the anti-freeze in Jets is called FSII.
The military use normal Jet A1 and add the anti-freeze at the point of sale by an accurate computerised system.
There is a device that looks like a telescope and that will test the content of the FSII in the Jet A1 very accurately ... there is no room is this game for mistakes.
The main thing is with Jet A1 is not to have any water contamination and a lot of testing happens behind the scenes to control that as well as testing for the 'bug' ... The 'bug' testing goes to an outside laboratory.
Other countries can use a variation of Jet A1, but not here that I'm aware of or ever seen.
Gong back a lot of years I think it was a 747 set the record for London to Sydney [I think] and on that flight they used a different spec Jet A for better performance from the engines so they could fly faster.✔
Technically you could run a Jet engine on Diesel and I have seen that but not on an aircraft.
With any planes that still run Avgas which there aren't many at the airports now, they have some planes that do run water methanol injection in the engine at take off for more power if they have a heavy load. They usually have tanks in the wing tips for the water menthol on the planes that I have seen.
One of my jobs was to write up by hand and sign off on the results of all the testing that happens to the Jet A1 and those records can and will be audited by any aircraft companies at any time.
I also did a lot of visual safety reviews on the refuelling of aircraft out on the tarmac so that everything was done correctly.
That basically covers everything I have ever seen ... ✔
A 747 weighs approx 300 tonnes and can hold over 150.000 litres of Jet A1 but I still can't work out how the can fjy...
Sometimes I get asked by various people what did I do at the airport and I told them I drive the truck that empties the toilets as it was too complicated to explain what I really did.
