perm filename SAFETY.NS[E84,JMC] blob sn#766031 filedate 1984-08-22 generic text, type T, neo UTF8
a021  0013  22 Aug 84
PM-Crash Test, Bjt,640
H&IONAL SXRASH Will Be Key Test Of Life-Saving Fuel Additive
By LEE SIEGEL
AP Science Writer
    LOS ANGELES (AP) - The U.S. government will crash a
remote-controlled jetliner into the desert this fall in a $9 million
test of a fuel additive designed to save lives by preventing downed
airliners from bursting into flames, officials say.
    The additive is designed to keep jet fuel from forming a deadly,
explosive mist as it spills during a crash, according to the Federal
Aviation Administration and the company that developed it.
    Tests of the additive so far have proved ''very impressive'' in
preventing old Navy jets from bursting into flames after they were
raced along ground tracks and crashed, said Dennis Flath, a spokesman
for the Federal Aviation Administration in Atlantic City, N.J.
    Although Flath declined to estimate when the agency might order use
of such additives, the manufacturer estimated that the FAA could
require U.S. airlines to use it by 1989 or 1990.
    Worldwide use might follow soon after, Jim L. McAbee, a project
manager for ICI Americas Inc., a Delaware chemical company, said
Tuesday.
    ICI Americas and its parent company, London-based Imperial Chemical
Industries, have spent two decades developing the additive that will
be used when the FAA and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration crash an old Boeing 720 at about 170 mph into the
Mojave Desert at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
    The crash test probably will be in October, McAbee said. NASA
spokesman Les Reinertson said no precise date has been set.
    McAbee said such aircraft fires account for 35 percent to 40 percent
of all deaths in ''impact-survivable'' aircraft crashes.
    ''What we are trying to do is prevent major disasters,'' he said.
''Post-crash aircraft fires can be prevented.''
    The key ingredient in the additive is a polymer - a heavy chemical
molecule. In normal use, the polymer molecules are coiled, but when
the fuel is spilled and exposed to wind as a jet crashes, the
molecules unravel into long strings.
    Those strings make jet fuel thicken and prevent it from forming a
fine mist which burns explosively as a jet crashes, igniting fuel that
has pooled on the ground and engulfing the jet in flames.
    The additive could cost U.S. airlines $300 million to $500 million
per year in addition to $11 billion in annual fuel costs, McAbee said,
estimating that would add $2 to $4 to the cost of an average airline
ticket. He said the cost of adapting jets to use the additive is not
yet known.
    The FAA has made post-crash fires a top priority. When a fire in the
cabin of an Air Canada DC-9 killed 23 people in Cincinnati after an
emergency landing in June 1983, renewed calls for airline safety
flooded Washington.
    In response, the FAA said then it was making progress in reducing
the danger to passengers from toxic fumes and flames in aircraft
cabins, but stressed that, ''The real problem is the post-crash
fire.'' The agency noted the need for a fuel additive.
    Until now, tests of the additive have been conducted by the FAA at
the Lakehurst (N.J.) Naval Air Engineering Center.
    In all the tests without the additive, the spilled fuel turned into
mist and ignited in huge fireballs, Flath said. But when the additive
was mixed with the fuel, the fuel formed large droplets which failed
to ignite, he said.
    ''As far as we're concerned, the tests conclude with the controlled
impact (of the Boeing 720) that's due out at Edwards,'' Flath said.
    General Electric is now developing ''degraders,'' which will break
down the additive just before the fuel enters jet engines so the fuel
can burn efficiently, McAbee said.
    A few years of work also is needed to ensure the additive doesn't
hinder jet engine reliability and safety, he said.
    
ap-ny-08-22 0313EDT
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