Bomber synthetic fuel tests to start in September

Source URL: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060815/BREAKINGNEWS/60815008
Posted at: http://www.air-attack/com/news/news_article/1989

No barksdale bombers are scheduled to take part in it, but there will be a touch of the Ark-La-Tex in tests to start next month on using synthetic fuel on B-52s.

A former commander of the 2nd Bomb Wing here, Curtis Bedke, has a big hand in the project, since he's commander of the Air Force Flight Training Center at Edwards Air Force Base, where the tests will take place.

"We're still on track," said Bedke, now a major general. "I'm updating the Secretary of the Air Force next Monday. We will spend the first two weeks of September doing ground engine run tests with the engine on the airplane, then the second half of the month flying it. (We) don't know the exact first flight date yet."

The tests will determine whether jet fuel derived from natural gas can work and work well in the veteran airplane that is the backbone of the bomber force.

The B-52 tapped for the tests is tail number 034, Bedke said. That airplane is from the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base, Barksdale's sister facility North Dakota.

Bedke commanded the 5th Operations Group there before coming to Barksdale in 2000.

The tests, done with the help of the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Materiel Command, will have the B-52 fly with two of its eight engines using a specially blended fuel made of conventional petroleum-derived JP-8 and fuel processed from natural gas via what is called the "Fischer-Tropsch" process.

If successful, the tests will help pave the way for the bomber force to use fuel from secure domestic sources.

This process, developed in Germany in the early 1920s, allows liquid petrochemicals to be made from natural gas, coal and shale oil. Aside from the security inducements in its favor, it's a costly process, but becomes more affordable when crude oil prices rise.

"The recent rise in cost of fuel has brought us to where many think we are now at the break-even point," Maj. Timothy Schulteis, Air Force propulsion program element monitor, said in May when the initiative was first announced. "One of the big advantages of that is we have a large domestic source for coal-based fuel."

The United States has what many industry estimates say is perhaps the largest reserve of coal in the world. That abundance of coal, and the Fischer-Tropsch process, could put the United States on the path to a more secure energy future, Air Force planners say.

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