Vaporization of JP-8 Jet Fuel in a Simulated Aircraft Fuel Tank ...

2.1 Jet Fuels
2.1.1 History of Jet Fuel
2.0 REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Jet fuels have changed significantly over the last sixty years. The first British jet engine,
patented by Sir Frank Whittle in 1930 and first flown in 1941, was designed to run on
illumination kerosene, as gasoline was in short supply during World War II [14]. The
first U.S. jet engines were direct copies of this original design, and adopted kerosene as
well for the primary fuel in U.S. jet turbines. The first U.S. jet fuel specification, AN-F-
32, was made in 1944 and was designated JP-1, a kerosene with a flashpoint of 109°F
and freeze point of -77°F [14]. JP-1 had limited availability, and was soon replaced by
wide cut fuels, which are mixtures of hydrocarbons that span the gasoline and kerosene
boiling point ranges [14]. The military version of the wide cut fuel, JP-4, was used by the
U.S. military from 1951 to 1995, and the commercial equivalent Jet-B was used in
airliners. The wide cut fuel had a flash point of about 0°F and freeze point of -77°F.
This low flash point indicates that the wide cut fuels were quite volatile, like gasoline,
which has a flash point of about -40°F, and that the risk of fire during fuel handling and
crash was great, as were evaporative losses at altitude. It was for these reasons that a
non-wide cut fuel was sought with a higher flashpoint temperature for safety and a higher
freeze point temperature for wider availability.
The specifications for Jet-A and Jet-A1 were made in the 1950’s for commercial
use, and have a minimum flashpoint specification of 100°F and freeze points of -40°F
and –47°F, respectively. The U.S. military equivalent of Jet-A is JP-8, and has been in
use since the changeover from wide cut JP-4 in 1995. JP-8 is very similar to Jet-A but
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