The availability of fuel has been the telling mark of man’s existence. In our time, most fuel has a petroleum source. At Princeton and other universities, researchers are working to better understand jet fuel.
While current guidelines specify some overall properties of jet fuels, they do not spell out the actual chemical composition. Depending on the source and processing method, jet fuel typically consists of hundreds to thousands of molecular structures that behave in a variety of ways.
The models developed by the team will represent and characterize the behavior of this broad range of jet fuel species using only a few types of molecular structures as surrogates for the larger whole. Dryer previously developed similar “surrogate fuel” models to represent gasoline, which are now being used for engine design by the automotive industry.
This un-knowledge of what we are working with has been the hallmark of the Industrial Age. We discover something that has a property, then sell the hell out of that property, not knowing what we are actually selling. JP4 is sort of like kerosene, which came on the scene in the form of ‘coal oil’. It was ignored until we killed off so many sperm whales that sperm whale oil became too expensive. Kerosene was available and became the standard lamp oil and begat the Standard Oil Company.
There is more in the press release on Princeton’s web site about ‘green’ fuels for jets. Check it out.