Energy is all around us. It’s responsible for making everything happen, whether you want to use any household appliance, take a walk through the park, drive your car across town, or do anything that involves movement or activity. Energy is the ability to do work and work in this context is when a force acts upon an object to cause a displacement of the object.To generate Energy we need fuel.If we have the right fuel then the impossible might become possible. One example as of the most remarkable science breakthroughs in the history of humanity is the possibility to fly. We humans cannot fly by default, but we can make objects that help us to do this.
I enjoy traveling and on long distance the most efficient way for me to reach my new destination is obviously traveling by plane. The fuel we use for this purpose is very powerful, dangerous and safe in the same time, it’s absolutely an amazing substance. Its fiery nature is what powers the jet engines that they’re capable of taking us up there, like in my case as I travel from Brussels (Belgium) to New York (USA), or from Brussels to Singapore, on average 300 passengers in a 250-ton aircraft from a standing start on the runway to a cruising speed of 800 km/h, and to a height of 12.000 m, in a matter of minutes. The sheer awesome power of this liquid fuels our wildest dreams. It allows us to soar above the clouds and travel anywhere in the world in a matter of hours.It’s the same stuff that took the first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, into space in his rocket, and that fuels the latest generation of SpaceX rockets, which fire satellites into the atmosphere. This fuel is called KEROSENE.
WHAT IS KEROSENE?
Kerosene = is a highly flammable combustible hydrocarbon which is, like so many fuels, derived from petroleum. Initially at the time of the discovery of its distillation process in 1846, kerosene was made from shale oils and coal tar, but after the drilling of the first oil well in America, since 1859 petroleum rapidly became the main source of kerosene.
The production process of Kerosene is made by distillation of crude oil. Therefore kerosene is a thin liquid (non-viscous) fairly complex mixture of chemicals such as paraffins (55.2%), naphthenes (40.9%), and aromatic hydrocarbons (3.9%). Some liquid kerosene fuels might contain potentially harmful compounds too, including hexane and benzene.
The term kerosene is in fact, derived from the Greek word (κηρός) “keros” for wax. Sometimes spelled kerosine or kerosiene, it is also called coal oil because of its asphalt origins.
It has a distinctive, slightly pungent smell and is usually sold in containers specifically designed for use with the substance. It can appear colorless confusingly, looks exactly like water or pale yellow similar to paraffin oil, heating oil or diesel. Sometimes, a blue dye is often added to identify it among other liquid fuels. When it burns it produces a bright yellow flame. Kerosene is a non-corrosive fuel which makes it a lot less dangerous than other types of fuel. It also has a long storage life making it ideal for storing for heating applications. Kero has a thin viscosity and a density between 0.78-0.81 g/cm³. Its actual density is 0.82 g/cm³, however as paraffin’s is 0.8g/cm³ and the two oils are virtually the same, a happy medium is found at 0.81g/cm³.
So where is all that hidden energy stored, all that hidden power? Why doesn’t the storage of all that raw energy inside the liquid make it appear, well, more syrupy and dangerous?
THE POWER OF KEROSENE
If you were to zoom in and have a look at kerosene on the atomic scale, you would see that its structure is like spaghetti. The backbone of each strand is made of carbon atoms, with each one bonded to the next. Every carbon is attached to 2 hydrogen atoms, except at the ends of the molecule, which have 3 hydrogen atoms; in its molecular structure it tends to contain hydrocarbons that have anywhere from 10 to 16 carbons in the chains. At this scale you can easily tell the difference between kerosene and water.
In water there isn’t a spaghetti structure, but rather a chaotic jumble of small V-shaped molecules (1 Oxygen atom attached to 2 Hydrogen atoms, H2O). Now, at this scale kerosene more closely resembles olive oil, which is also comprised of carbon-base molecules all jumbled up together. But where the strands in kerosene are more like spaghetti, in olive oil they’re branched and twirled. Because the molecules in olive oil are a more complex shape than the ones in kerosene, it’ s harder for them to wiggle past each other, and so the liquid flows less easily – in other words, olive oil is more -viscous than kerosene. They’re both oils, and on an atomic level they look relatively similar, but, because of their structural differences, olive oil is gloopy while kerosene pours more like water, This difference doesn’t just determine how viscous these oils are, but also how flammable.
Generally Kerosene is a liquid substance which functions as an unbelievable versatile fuel that can be effective for a wide range of applications. Yet since the first commercial planes were available in its refined form, kerosene is commonly used as aviation fuel; it’s less prone to freezing, it doesn’t burn too quickly at high temperatures and it’s highly combustible – meaning it’s perfectly suited to the demands of a plane.
If you have ever blown up a balloon and then let it go, allowing it to zoom and far its way around a room, you will have a good grasp of how a jet engine works. As compressed air shoots out in one direction, the balloon is propelled in the opposite: this is Newton’s 3rd law of motion, which states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. But storing enough compressed gas to power an aircraft would be pretty inefficient. Luckily, back in 1930, the British engineer Frank Whittle worked out how to solve this problem. He reckoned that since the sky is already full of gas, a plane shouldn’t need to carry it around; you just have to compress the gas that’s already in the sky as you fly along, and shoot it out the back. All you need is a machine to compress the air.
This compressor is what you see under the wing as you board a plane – it looks like a giant fan, and it is, but what you can’t see is that inside it are 10 or more fans, each one smaller than the last. Their job is to suck in the air and compress it.From there, the compressed air goes to the combustion chamber, in the middle of the engine, where it’s mixed with kerosene and ignited, producing a jet of hot gas that shoots out the back of the engine. The genius in the design is that, on its way out of the engine, some of the air’s energy is used to rotate a set of turbines – and it’s these turbines that rotate the compressors at the front of the engine. . In other words, the engine harvests energy from the hot gas that it then uses to collect and compress more air as it flies through the sky.
The air shooting out the back of the engine allowed our plane, which weighed approximately 250 tons, to gain speed. It’s always hard to get a feel for just how fast you’re going when you’re looking out of the window of a speeding aircraft. The wings bob and wobble awkwardly at every bump of the runway, giving no hint of the engineering elegance that they’ll display once airborne. . At 130 km/h, the intensity of the rattling and groaning cabin interior begins a worrying crescendo. If I had never flown in a plane, at this point I’d be very doubtful that we would ever get off the ground.
THE MAIN BENEFITS OF USING KEROSENE FUEL IN AVIATION
Rocket fuel kerosene, also known as RP1 type kerosene fuel, is commonly used in jet engines as rocket fuel when mixed with oxygen. Kerosene has many benefits over other fuels when used as jet fuel. Here are some of them:
LOW FREEZING POINT – Kerosene has a lower freezing point than gasoline, protecting it from freezing in bone-chilling temperatures such as those found at high altitudes. As kerosene is a mixture of petroleum-based hydrocarbons and other compounds, its exact freezing point varies, but regardless, it freezes at much lower temperatures than gasoline.
HIGH FLASHPOINT – Another benefit of using kerosene in airplanes is that it’s less volatile than gasoline. Its high flash point of 38o C which means that it is less likely to ignite spontaneously than other fuels, and it is also relatively stable and easy to store. It offers higher octane ratings to achieve greater power and efficiency when compared to gasoline with a flashpoint as low as -40oC. This property makes kerosene a much safer fuel to store and handle.
LOW VISCOSITY – At a temperature of 20°C and pressure of 1atm, Kerosene has a dynamic viscosity of μ= 1,64cP (centiPoise) therefore a little bit bigger than water (which has μ= 1cP at standard conditions). Kerosene has a low viscosity rating which means it’s even thinner than gasoline (gasoline has μ= 0,6 cP . This is an important factor as highly viscous fuels can block internal channels in an airplane’s engine. Kerosene’s low freezing point maintains its thinner consistency during flights, allowing it to easily travel through the engine and connected components.
CONTROLLABLE FLAMMABILITY – Despite being a highly flammable liquid, Kerosene can’t be set on fire with a match. In liquid from, it’s non-explosive and cannot mix with the air to become explosive. For it to ignite, it must be vaporized.
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A plane is, in a way, the modern magic lantern. Its genie is kerosene, which will grant your wish to go anywhere in the world, flying you there not on a magic carpet, but in something even better, a cabin that protects you from the extreme cold and wind, and is comfortable enough for you to relax, even sleep, in through your journey. Of course, like all genies it has a dark side. We have fallen in love with the power of kerosene, but flying, and indeed the use of other products dependent on crude oil, are wreaking havoc with our global climate: it is warming rapidly as a result of the carbon dioxide emissions from burning oils like kerosene. Globally we currently consume 16 billion liters of oil per day. Whether we will be clever enough to find a way of putting the genie back in the bottle is surely one of the most important questions of the 21st century.
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