Effect of Cold Flow Additives on Aviation Fuel Fluidity and Tank Hold-Up

JPTS is a specialty fuel that has excellent thermal-oxidative stability characteristics and a low freeze point temperature. Replacement of JPTS with JP-8+100 has important logistical and cost advantages. Thus, it would be advantageous to have a JP-8+100 fuel that has thermal-oxidative and low-temperature characteristics that are similar to those of JPTS. The JP-8+100 additive package that has been developed previously provides low surface deposition. However, enhancement of the low-temperature behavior of JP-8+100 has not been addressed. The current work studies the potential of developing low-temperature additives for JP-8+100 fuel. In this work, the additives were blended with a representative JP-8+100 fuel, and the resulting fuel blends were evaluated in a low-temperature (-73 °C) test facility. Both the amount of solidified fuel remaining in the tank after the flowing fuel had been drained (hold-up) and the reduction in fuel flow rate from that at 21 °C were measured. It was observed that there was significant enhancement of cold flow characteristics by some of the additives.