FAA Bulletin: DEF in Jet Fuel

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Say for instance a plane gets DEF contaminated fuel and it's caught in time before it makes it way to the engines and APU. If that airline doesn't have a maintenance base at that airport. What happens to the plane - will it get towed to a remote stand for a ground crew to remediate the problem?
 
Originally Posted by nthach
Say for instance a plane gets DEF contaminated fuel and it's caught in time before it makes it way to the engines and APU. If that airline doesn't have a maintenance base at that airport. What happens to the plane - will it get towed to a remote stand for a ground crew to remediate the problem?


If you found out about contaminated fuel before engine or APU start, you can de-fuel the airplane.

All that fuel becomes hazmat.

But I don't know if simply removing the contaminated fuel from the tanks is sufficient in this case. There is always a bit of "unusable" fuel. Some contaminated fuel is left in the tanks, then.

Somebody smarter than me, who works in maintenance, would be able to give you a better answer.
 
Originally Posted by Astro14
Originally Posted by nthach
Say for instance a plane gets DEF contaminated fuel and it's caught in time before it makes it way to the engines and APU. If that airline doesn't have a maintenance base at that airport. What happens to the plane - will it get towed to a remote stand for a ground crew to remediate the problem?


If you found out about contaminated fuel before engine or APU start, you can de-fuel the airplane.

All that fuel becomes hazmat.

But I don't know if simply removing the contaminated fuel from the tanks is sufficient in this case. There is always a bit of "unusable" fuel. Some contaminated fuel is left in the tanks, then.

Somebody smarter than me, who works in maintenance, would be able to give you a better answer.


Well, I know that on the airplanes I work (Embraer ERJ), there's around 100-200 lbs of fuel left in the center tank (wing stub) after defueling. After defueling, we remove that last couple of hundred lbs. of fuel via 2 small drain valves on the underside of the wing stub.
 
The fuel can be recycled the DEF is mostly water. I am sure you wouldn't want to run in in an aircraft turbine but lesser engines could burn it run it in a ships engine .Heater?
 
Depending on the concentration (how much DEF was in the fuel), length of time before it was removed, and temperature, the aircraft could be damaged even if the engines weren't started. Urea is corrosive to aluminum.
 
I know airplanes have sealant for the in-wing and non-removable tanks - but urea can eat through the primer that's applied to the in-wing tanks as well?
 
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