Bill Freeman wrote:

paul wrote:

That's is why I find it hard to believe TWA Flight 800 just blew up.
Unless of course somebody put avgas in there by mistake or otherwise.

Paul Lamar

Paul,

Jon Lauter is right.  The safety issue with kerosene, Jet A & diesel is that
they are low volatility and usually can't evaporate enough to get to a
combustible mixture.  A nearly empty tank on Flt 800 was being
used as the cabin cooling heat sink (apparently, this is from the news
papers so is suspect data) and got pretty warm, may have had
an ignition source since the wiring in the tank was in bad shape.

Also, the Air Force has lost a couple of bombers to ground fuel tank
explosions (Jet fuel) and they now inert the tanks, I think with
carbon dioxide.  This proves that while Jet A fuel tank explosions
are extremely rare, they are not impossible.

The solution is to use one of the "oxygen makers" from a F18, which
filters out the oxygen from air to provide breathing oxygen for the pilot.
Only dump the oxy and pipe the nitrogen into the tanks, letting any overflow
just overflow.  If it is small enough to fit in a F18 it has to fit in an
airliner.

Fortunately avgas is reliably volatile and will always produce a mixture
too rich to burn in the tank.

Bill

 
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