Jawaharlal Nehru Technological

University Kakinada
University College of Engineering (A)
Kakinada
Dept. of Petroleum
Engineering & Petrochemical
Engineering

B. Tech. Petrochemical Engineering

Petroleum Refinery Engineering

Aviation Turbine Fuels
Prof. K. V. Rao
Programme Director
Petroleum Courses
JNTUK

Jet Engine
A jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a
fast moving jet which generates thrust by jet
propulsion in accordance with Newton's laws of
motion.

Turbine/Jet
History

engines

for

Air

Craft:

Brief

Jet propulsion can be traced back to the 1st century

B.C. when an Egyptian, Hero, is credited with inventing
a toy that used jets of steam to spin a sphere.
Sixteen centuries later, Leonardo da Vinci sketched a
device that used a flux of hot gas to do mechanical
work.
By the 17th century, inventors were beginning to
develop simple turbine systems to operate machinery.
The development of a turbine engine for aircraft began
independently in Germany and Britain in the 1930s.

In Germany, Hans von Ohain designed the engine that

powered the first jet flight in 1939.
Germany deployed the jet-powered Messerschmitt
262 late in World War II.
In Britain, Frank Whittle obtained a patent for a
turbine engine in 1930.
An aircraft powered by an engine he designed first
flew in 1941.
The first British jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor, also
flew late in World War II.

Types of Fuel
Illuminating kerosine, produced for wick lamps,
was used to fuel the first turbine engines.
Since the engines were thought to be relatively
insensitive to fuel properties, kerosine was
chosen mainly because of availability;
After World War II, the U.S. Air Force started using
wide-cut fuel, which, essentially, is a
hydrocarbon mixture spanning the gasoline and
kerosine boiling ranges.

Again, the choice was driven by considerations of

availability: It was assumed that a wide-cut fuel would
be available in larger volumes than either gasoline or
kerosene alone;
However, compared to a kerosene-type fuel, wide-cut
jet fuel was found to have operational disadvantages
due to its higher volatility:

Greater losses due to evaporation at high

altitudes.
Greater risk of fire during handling on the ground.
Crashes of planes fueled with wide-cut fuel were
less survivable.

Kerosene-type jet fuel (including Jet A and Jet A-1) has

a carbon number distribution between about 8 and 16
carbon numbers (carbon atoms per molecule);
wide-cut or naphtha-type jet fuel (including Jet B),
between about 5 and 15 carbon numbers

Aviation Turbine Fuel

Jet fuel is a colorless,
petroleum distillate liquid.

combustible,

straight-run

Its principal uses are as jet engine fuel. The most

common jet fuel worldwide is a kerosene-based fuel
classified as JET A-1.
The governing specifications in India are IS 1571: 2001
(7th Rev).
Indian Oil is India's first ISO-9002 certified oil company
conforming to stringent global quality requirements of
aviation fuel storage & handling.
Indian Oil Aviation also caters to the fuel requirements of
the Indian Defence Services, besides refueling VVIP
flights at all the airports and remote heli-pads/heli-bases
across the Indian subcontinent.

Crude oil is fed to the distillation column where straight-run

light and heavy gasoline, kerosine, and diesel are separated at
atmospheric pressure.
The bottoms from the atmospheric column are vacuum
distilled to obtain gas oils for FCC or hydrocracker feed.
The gas oils may be hydrotreated to reduce sulfur and
nitrogen to levels that will improve the performance of the
FCC process.
Previously, the vacuum resid might have been used as a lowvalue, high-sulfur fuel oil for onshore power generation or
marine fuel.
But to remain competitive, refiners must wring as much high
value product as possible from every barrel of crude.
As a result, the vacuum resid may be sent to a resid
conversion unit, such as a resid cracker, solvent extraction
unit, or coker.
These units produce additional transportation fuel or gas oils,

Blending
The jet fuel produced by a refinery may be all
straight-run or hydroprocessed product, or it may be a
blend of straight-run, hydroprocessed, and/or
hydrocracked product.
Small amounts of heavy gasoline components also
may be added.
Straight-run kerosene from low-sulfur crude oil may
meet all the jet fuel specification properties.
But straight-run kerosene is normally upgraded by
Merox treating, clay treating, or hydrotreating before
it can be sold as jet fuel.

Upgrading Processes
Sweetening processes remove a particular class of
sulfur-containing compounds called mercaptans from
jet fuel.
Mercaptans are undesirable because they are
corrosive and also because of their offensive odor.
Several processes have been developed to remove
mercaptans by converting them to disulfides.
These disulfides are not corrosive and their odors are
not as strong as the mercaptans they replace.
Sodium plumbite and copper chloride have been used
as catalysts for this conversion in the past.

In recent years, the Merox (mercaptan oxidation)

process, which uses a cobalt-based catalyst, has almost
completely replaced the older technologies.
Most of these chemical sweetening processes do not
change the total sulfur content of the fuel; they merely
convert sulfur from one chemical form to another.
Some versions of the Merox process extract the
disulfides that are formed and thus lower the total sulfur
content.

Hydroprocessing
Hydroprocessing is a generic term for a range of
processes that use hydrogen and an appropriate catalyst
to remove undesired components from refinery streams.
The processes range from mild conditions that remove
reactive compounds like olefins and some sulfur and
nitrogen compounds, to more severe conditions that
saturate aromatic rings and remove almost all sulfur and
nitrogen compounds.
Hydroprocessing breaks apart molecules containing sulfur
and converts the sulfur to hydrogen sulfide, which is
subsequently removed from the fuel.

Clay Treating
Certain polar compounds can be removed from jet
fuel by clay treating. In this relatively simple process,
the fuel is allowed to pass through a bed of clay.
Certain classes of polar compounds, especially those
that act as surfactants, adsorb onto the surface of
the clay and thus are removed from the fuel.
In the Merox process discussed above, surfactants
can be formed and it is usually necessary to clay
treat the fuel after the Merox process to remove
them.

Hydrocracking
The hydrocracking process yields a large
percentage of product in the kerosine and diesel
boiling range.

Aviation Turbine Fuel

Aviation turbine fuel is a mixture of many different
hydrocarbons.
Modern analytical techniques are not powerful enough
to separate all the individual molecular species
present in jet fuel, so we dont know how many there
are, but a good guess is a thousand or more.
Kerosene-type jet fuel has a carbon number
distribution between about 8 and 16 carbon numbers;
Wide-cut jet fuel, between about 5 and 15 carbon
numbers.
Typical boiling curves of kerosene-type and wide-cut
jet fuel are shown in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1: Typical

D86
DistillationCurvesKerosene-Type
and
Wide-Cut Jet Fuels

Figure 4.4 summarizes the relationships between

hydrocarbon class and jet fuel properties.
Normal paraffins have poor volumetric energy contents
and very poor low-temperature flow properties.
Aromatics have very good volumetric energy contents
but poor combustion quality and low-temperature flow
properties.
Isoparaffins and naphthenes are intermediate, with
these properties falling between those of normal
paraffins and aromatics.

Figure 4.5 shows which of the important jet fuel properties

are bulk properties, and which depend on the presence or
absence of trace components.
The trace components may be present in the hydrocarbon
base fuel as manufactured or come from another source,
such as additives or contaminants.

Additives
Antioxidants
An approved antioxidant or mixture of
antioxidants shall be added to a fuel (or a fuel
component) which has been hydroprocessed
(i.e. manufactured using a catalytic hydrogen
process such as hydrotreating, hydrofining,
hydrocracking, etc).
This shall be done immediately after
hydroprocessing and prior to the product or
component being passed into storage in order
to prevent gum formation and peroxidation
after manufacture.

The total concentration of active material(s)

in fuel or that proportion of the fuel blend
that has been hydroprocessed shall not be
less than 17.0 mg/l nor exceed 24.0 mg/l.
Where a finished fuel comprises a blend of
hydroprocessed and non-hydro-processed
components,
the
requirements
for
mandatory addition of antioxidant applies
only to that portion of the blend which has
been hydroprocessed.

a) 2,6-ditertiary-butyl-4-methyl-phenol;
b) 2,4-dimethyl-6-tertiary-butyl-phenol;
c) 2,6-ditertiary-butyl-phenol;
d) A mixture consisting of 75 percent minimum of 2,6ditertiary-butyl-phenol; and 25 percent maximum of tertiary
and tritertiary butyl-phenols;
e) A mixture consisting of 55 percent minimum of 2,4dimethyl-6-tertiary-butyl-phenol; 15 percent minimum of 4methyl-2-6-ditertiary-butyl-phenol; with the remainder, 30
percent maximum, a mixture of monomethyl and dimethyltertiary-butyl-phenols;
f)

A mixture consisting of 72 percent minimum of 2,4dimethyl-6-tertiary-butyl-phenol and 28 percent maximum,

mixture of tertiary-butyl-methyl-phenols and tertiary-butyl-

Metal Deactivator Additive (MDA)

An approved metal deactivator, N, Ndisalicylidene 1, 2-propanediamine, may be
added in amount not exceeding 2.0 mg/l on
initial batching of the fuel at the refinery.
5.7 mg/l on cumulative addition when
redoping the fuel to counteract the effects of
metals known to be deleterious to thermal
stability such as Cu, Cd, Co, Fe and Zn
provided
that
the
nature
of
the
contamination is reported.

Static Dissipater Additive (SDA)

Stadis 450
Octel Starreon (USA) / The
Associated Octel Company Ltd. (UK)
a. The concentration of SDA to be used in
newly manufactured, or on first doping of
fuel is 3.0mg/l maximum.
b. The cumulative concentration of SDA
allowed when redoping fuel to maintain
conductivity is 5.0mg/l maximum.

Lubricity Improver Additive (LIA)

Aircraft/engine fuel system components and
fuel control units rely on the fuel to lubricate
their moving parts.
The effectiveness of a jet fuel as a lubricant in
such equipment is referred to as its lubricity.
Differences in component design and materials
result in varying degrees of equipment
sensitivity to fuel lubricity.
Similarly, jet fuels vary in their level of lubricity.
A qualified LIA may be added to the fuel to
impart improved lubricity to the fuel.

The approved additives:

Fuel System Icing Inhibitor (FSII)

A qualified FSII may be added to the fuel as agreed to
between the purchasing authority and the supplier.
Concentrations less than 0.02% by volume can be
considered
negligible
and
do
not
require
agreement/notification.
Diethylene Glycol Monomethyl Ether
0.1 percent and not more
( DIEGME )
percent by volume

Not less than

0.15

Handling and storage

For the safe handling and storage of the fuel the
instructions given in IS 7667 shall be followed.

Thank You