NASA Fires Up Jet Fuel That Tastes Like Chicken 147
coondoggie writes "It may never make it into everyday jet-fighter use, but NASA is checking out biofuel made from chicken and beef fat. The chicken fat fuel, known as Hydrotreated Renewable Jet Fuel, was burned in the engine of a DC-8 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center as part of its Alternative Aviation Fuels Experiment, which is looking at developing all manner of biofuel alternatives to traditional Jet Propellant 8. The DC-8 is used as a test vehicle because its engine operations are well-documented and well-understood, NASA says."
Re:You never know, so take them all! (Score:4, Informative)
Chicken Fat: 16,873 BTU/pound
Fuel Oil #2: 19,237 BTU/pound
In fact, I got this from a study that was investigating the advantages of mixing various animal fats with fuel oil to eke the latter -- for example a blend of 1/3 chicken fat and 2/3 fuel oil. You will all be pleased to note that this mix has 18,223 BTU/pound and that chicken fat is readily miscible in fuel oil. By itself it has a moderate tendency to produce ash in the burning process, but this is mitigated in the mixture. Of course this study is investigating the burning of this sort of mix in furnaces, but the principle is the same and I'm guessing that this mix would work fine in any engine that could run on fuel oil #2. An acquaintance of mine already has experience with the standard treatment of animal fats into an acceptable biodiesel (which involves adding a bunch of stuff e.g. methanol and filtering it) and this works too, but is a bigger hassle than just filtering and mixing.
I also, of course, have the common experience of grilling fatty chicken with the skin still on, which can turn your entire grill into the moral equivalent of a rocket engine on short notice and "render" your chicken into little chunks of charcoal. There's plenty of energy in that fat, although less, as noted, than in standard grades of fuel oil. Alas, if untreated it is vulnerable to oxidation, a.k.a. "going rancid" and besides, however many chickens there are they are a lousy source of fat per se in terms of being able to provide a significant sustainable supply of biofuel. I suppose it is better to render the fat from the skins removed making skinless chicken parts, and better to remove this skin and fat than to eat it, but we're talking a drop in the bucket of energy demand.
BTW, "tallow" (saturated animal fats) are little different from more polyunsaturated chicken fat in energy content. They appear to produce less ash burning on their own (hence tallow candles) but more ash in a fuel oil blend. Pretty interesting, actually.
Children fat, however, was not listed. No doubt an oversight on the part of those conducting the study. Personally, I think that using children fat to power rock star tour buses and heat the homes of the elderly would cure the energy crisis in no time at all, as there is little that is wrong with this planet that wouldn't be seriously ameliorated by using up, say, 2-4 billion children (including some of the older children we sometimes refer to as "young adults") and dumping world mythologies in the process that encourage the unrestrained production of still more children. If we used children we could stay toasty warm in the winter and significantly reduce future demand on our limited energy reserves as well as every other fundamental scarcity created by the ongoing Malthusian disaster.
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