Kerosene dehydration process investigation in the fuel tank

of the passenger airplane during cruise flight

Dmitry A. Bondarenko1
Eduard L. Kitanin2

Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), Moscow, Russia (1)

E-mail: dmbondarenko@mail.ru
Address: 140180, Russia, Moscow region, Zhukovsky town, Dugina str., h.18, f.38

St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, Russia (2)

E-mail: elkitanin@mail.ru
Address: 197198, Saint-Petersburg, Syezzhinskaya str., h. 29/9, f. 21

ABSTRACT
It is a known fact that water dissolved in jet fuel can condense into drops and freeze during the flight as the fuel
temperature declines, giving rise to difficult and even disastrous situations. Dehydrating the fuel on board the aircraft, i.e.
decreasing the dissolved water content in cruise flight, appears as a possible solution. The results of an experimental study
into the in-flight fuel dehydration process by fuel sparging or ullage blowdown are discussed. The experiments showed
that sparging has an indisputable advantage over ullage blowdown, although it requires that oxygen-poor air be used to
eliminate fire hazards. A method of calculating the dissolved water content decrease as a function of gas mixture
temperature, pressure and flow rate and time is proposed.

The fuel supplied into the passenger aircraft tank during fueling has been saturated with air at ground pressure and
temperature and typically has moisture in it. After take-off, pressure drops fast so that in cruise flight with ambient
pressure way below the atmospheric pressure (~0.2 bar) and the fuel temperature plunging to -20 to -30ºС, the fuel gets
oversaturated with air and the dissolved water content rises high above the equilibrium. Under such conditions, dissolved
water evolves into droplets, freezes and settles on the tank bottom or penetrates into the fuel system filters, which is
particularly dangerous. A metastable fuel-air mixture can be effectively dehydrated to safe levels by sparging it with a
dry gas mixture. Sparging, i.e. injecting bubbling gas into fuel, triggers spontaneous release of dissolved air, creating a
vast heat exchange surface that the dissolved water intensively evaporates through, thus causing the dissolved water
content to drop significantly. It’s these processes the paper purports to discuss.
Although the studies of the sparging process have been going on for quite a while, many researchers are still addressing
its various aspects. This work stands apart in that it looks into the fuel sparging under the conditions corresponding to the
actual passenger aircraft’s cruise flight environment, i.e. lower pressure and temperature.
A test rig was specifically designed and built to study the dehydration rates in fuel sparging and ullage blowdown. The
test rig enables simulating pressure and temperature in the fuel tank in cruise flight and the sparging mixture composition
and moisture content, and monitoring the ullage gas composition and dissolved water content during dehydration. Note
that measuring the dissolved water content is a challenge in itself, as the equilibrium concentrations under these conditions
can vary from several ppm to several dozen ppm.
Dehydration is accompanied by discharge of dissolved nitrogen and oxygen whose concentrations exceed the
equilibrium concentration typical for sparging. Oxygen output is of critical importance, since at the beginning of the
process its concentration in the ullage may reach values that are unacceptable from the fire safety perspective.
Thus the experiments focused on the dehydration behavior of kerosene like Jet-A1 sparged by oxygen-depleted air and
monitored the ullage gas composition at different gas mixture flow rates, pressures, and temperatures. The investigation
results were consolidated to establish an empirical relationship which allows calculating the variation of the dissolved
water and gas (oxygen and nitrogen) contents for a given gas mixture composition and moisture content and fuel
temperature and pressure.