ASTM NEWS


global aspect of it. That an Airbus airplane or a Boeing airplane or an Embraer airplane, wherever they take off from and wherever they land, they’ve got to get the same fuel. Because as you can imagine, modern jet aircraft are extremely complex designs, and they are designed around the fuel properties and composition that the ASTM spec drives a producer to. So globally, it has to be the same fuel.


JP Ervin (25:08): So the last question I wanted to ask you both is: I, as a kid, was obsessed with airplanes, with Ferraris. I had books with diagrams of Mustangs and F-16s (Top Gun came out at a very formative period in my life). So I wanted to ask you both how you got involved in this industry, because if you went to 8-year-old me and told me that you get to work with airplanes or cars and things like that, I would’ve been very envious. So I was just curious to ask you both how you got involved with these industries and this kind of topic area that you’re pursuing with ASTM. Mark Rumizen (25:42): Well, like you said, it is kind of an interesting industry and coming out of college with an engineering degree, I went to work for Pratt and Whitney, which makes jet engines. So after a career at Pratt and Whitney and GE, which also makes jet engines, I went to the FAA and while at the FAA, there was an opportunity to move into a job that covered aviation fuels. And again, it seemed like something interesting, something new to learn. And so I went with that job. To be honest with you, the first almost 10 years was actually kind of boring, because as I said, aviation fuel has an outstanding safety record, FAA is an aviation safety agency, and nobody there was really concerned with jet fuel. But then in the early 2000’s, all of a sudden I became a rock star because everybody wanted to know about jet fuel and how jet fuel was approved. (26:39): And the FAA played a key role in it. That led to looking towards ASTM to leverage the processes they use, all built around the specification to manage this introduction of these fuels made from different materials using different processes, these sustainable fuels, these alternative fuels, these synthetic fuels. And so I was kind of in the right place at the right time. From a technical perspective, it’s learning new things and it’s a fascinating experience. And from the FAA, it led me to a company now, as I said, Air Company in New York City that’s developing a fuel. And this is fascinating technology where they take CO2, think of it, CO2 and hydrogen gases, run them through a reactor and out comes fuel components. Fuel components that can be further refined and make jet fuel. So it’s just, it’s learning new things. It’s fascinating. It’s aviation, it’s great. No, I’m not a pilot. No, I never got to fly any jet fighters, although I was hoping for that. But I’ve been around airplanes now for my whole career and yes, it is fascinating.


Scott Fenwick (27:46): Yeah, I, my career started as a, as a petroleum chemist. And so when somebody asked me today, you know what I do for a living? Tell them I’m a fuels chemist and, and technical director for clean fuels and their eyes, before I can even get too much further, their eyes glaze over, roll in the back of their head and “Oh, nice.” You know? “Oh, great.” But when you begin to show them, when you take them out on the boats, running up and down the Mississippi River, you show them that engine room or, or you take them into an underground mine, that big heavy duty mining equipment, you know, when they’re standing next to a wheel with a tire that’s 12 feet tall, that gets them excited. Whether or not it’s my grandkids or my colleagues and any ages in between, it’s hard not to get enthusiastic about seeing these big machines, whether it’s the airplanes, the locomotives, fast cars and trucks. It doesn’t matter. It’s really easy to get enthusiastic about that, but none of them would be able to operate without quality fuels and the standards that ASTM brings to the table.


JP Ervin (29:00): Well, mark and Scott, thanks so much for being here. I really enjoyed our conversation.


Scott Fenwick (29:03): Thanks


Mark Rumizen (29:04): You. Yep. Thank you. I enjoyed it too.


JP Ervin (29:11): Today I’m also talking to Melanie Thom, who is owner of Bayer Aerospace Consulting. We’re going to be talking about AGAs and some of the developments in the industry. So Melanie, to get started, could you give our listeners an overview of what AGAs are, and the aviation industry segment that it’s used in?


Melanie Thom (29:28):


So most of our listeners are probably familiar with gasoline. You put it in your car or your lawnmower. Aviation gasoline is the same concept. It differs from jet fuel, which would be on your flight to San Francisco, in that it is a more volatile material than jet fuel. Jet fuel is more like kerosene. With those concepts in mind, AV gas is, interestingly enough, the last leaded transportation fuel. So that is what makes it interesting. It is used in a piston aircraft/piston engine where the concept is you ignite it, it explodes, and it pushes a piston, which makes power in the engine.


JP Ervin (30:32): PIN OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2024


Great. And so I think for people that aren’t experts in the industry, they probably associate gas with automobile gas and lawn mower gas, as you mentioned, and then they probably think of jumbo jets and military supersonic jets. So I was curious if you could talk about what types of use cases this field is for. Like what types of vehicles, what, what jobs or roles are they performing?


Melanie Thom (30:54): Sure. So as I said, it’s a fuel used in a piston engine, whereas the aircraft that you would see flying over your yard at 30,000 feet is a turbine engine. The difference is what the fuel has to do. Whereas a jet engine turns a turbine just like something you would see at the local dam, and it continuously runs, an aviation gasoline, or any gasoline in a piston engine, operates in a non- continuous way. Now in our industry, those aircraft are everything from a small one-seat home-built aircraft with a tiny little propeller to something very, very large, like a DC-3, which has a very large piston engine that has many cylinders. Some aircraft have one engine. A small aircraft may only need one engine. So it’s a single engine aircraft to a multi-engine aircraft, which could have as many as four or eight piston engines. (32:15):


So some people think when they think of a piston airplane or general aviation, a lot of people call it general aviation. They think it’s just the rich doctor with this expensive airplane, you know, shooting over to Martha’s Vineyard on the weekend. But of those 220,000 aircraft out there, many of them are doing work. So it’s everything from a news helicopter to a crop duster, to people flying pipelines, and power line inspections, moving cargo. They provide transport. You go up to Alaska and there are no roads. So transport is done by everything from a small to a larger piston aircraft. It is more than just recreation.


JP Ervin (33:16): I next wanted to ask about standards and, just kind of big picture, how they fit into the situation. So can you give us some examples of typical standards or types of standards that might be relevant to the industry we’re talking about?


Melanie Thom (33:29): So, ASTM plays a very important role in our industry. Uh, they provide procedures and standards and specifications that cover everything from the fuel. So D910 tells me I have aviation gasoline, and I know what that aviation gasoline is to the test methods that we use when we certify a fuel or come up with the certificate of conformance on that fuel. So when I want to look at it, I am going to run a distillation to an ASTM standard. So that is the front end of what ASTM standards do for us. I like to think of ASTM as providing me a tool. They provide me a common ground, and they provide an explanation for everyone who ends up using D910. Um, most people think that ASTM tells me what my fuel has to be, it tells me how I have to test it, and in reality it is just a tool for the people who do tell me what I have to do. So an organization like, like the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, they do tell me what I can and can’t do, and then ASTM becomes a set of tools that provides me this means of compliance.


JP Ervin (35:12): Yeah, and I think what the last point you bring up is interesting because some industries ASTM works with are not like this, but in the case of aviation, it’s an example of a very heavily regulated industry that also has, an organization like ASTM that’s developing consensus standards that, as you say, are tools. So I wanted to ask you about how the committee functions in relationship to the industry. And one of the things I’ve noticed is that there tends to be confusion about what ASTM does with people who are kind of outside the standards world. And that’s true of pretty much any committee when you talk about it. But people generally assume that we’re certifying things. A lot of people ask me if ASTM is the same as OSHA or similar organizations, they assume we’re passing laws and so on. So I was curious if you could talk a bit about the relationship of this committee in particular to the AGAs industry because it is kind of a unique case.


Melanie Thom (36:07): I’d love to -- ASTM is a very powerful tool for us, in the context of being a tool. The important part of the ASTM standards is that they provide us a very repeatable and stable documentation. It gives us this thing which we can use to contract with. We can write a contract and say, I’m going to buy to this standard. It allows me to purchase something. I can call up Exxon and say, I need to purchase fuel to D910. And that’s all we have to say. It holds in all that information. It also provides me a tool with which I can defend myself: ‘I purchased fuel to D910, I have the certificate of conformance that they did all these ASTM tests in general.’ Getting an ASTM standard or test method is very hard to get. There’s a lot of due diligence there. There’s a lot of expectation that is wrapped into what ASTM does for our industry. But once you have gone through that sometimes very painful process, now you have that standard and you’re on the other side.


JP Ervin (37:33):


So I wanted to follow up on something you said at the beginning of our conversation, which is about lead. And so I think one of the big discussions happening now about AVGAS has to do with unleaded aviation gasoline. I think this is also an interesting topic to ask you about because one of the things I’ve noticed, ASTM does a lot of things related to lead in, for example, lead paint. And I think especially in the United States, there’s an assumption that lead has vanished from our lives because of home


inspections and things like that. But in this case, it’s one of many cases where lead is still used. So I was curious if you could tell me kind of big picture about the role of lead in AGAs and then also what talk is happening in the industry right now about unleaded aviation, gasoline and other things like that.


Melanie Thom (38:21): Sure. Interestingly enough, 100 low lead leaded aviation gasoline is the last transportation fuel used in the US that still contains lead. Even NASCAR has gotten rid of lead in their fuel. And to be perfectly honest, we as an industry would also love to get rid of lead. It’s hazardous, it’s expensive, it comes with a lot of regulations and tracking requirements. And in reality, our fuel 100 low lead is a very small part of a very large industry’s production. So our little bit of fuel with our lead is a real pain in the you- know-what for these large companies. But if it were easy, we would’ve gotten rid of it in the seventies the first time around, or we would’ve gotten rid of it in the nineties the next time around. It’s not easy. So while everyone would love us included to get rid of lead, it is not something that, that you can do quickly because our industry is so old and has such long lives on its hardware, aviation gasoline has a lot to do. Obviously it has to make power. (39:50):


So you need something with a good energy density. You have to be able to cool the engine without making car buys. You have to be able to have the range you need. You have to worry about things like weight and balance. If we dramatically change what a load of fuel weighs, you dramatically change your weight and balance on an aircraft. It’s more than just making something that works in an engine and doesn’t detonate, which is not easy, don’t get me wrong. But that’s just the first step. And you’re not starting from zero. We have 50 years of aircraft out there that we still take care of. So you have to worry about all the new builds. You have to worry about legacy aircraft, you have to worry about the orphaned airplanes for which the companies are no longer out there. You have to worry about home builds. (40:46): It’s 220,000 aircraft you have to worry about. And it’s not just making the engine run, it’s worrying about the hoses and the seals and the gaskets and the fuel cells and the sealants that are in the fuel cells fuel system itself. And you have to worry about the paint and the inks and the markings on all the parts. And it’s interesting that for aviation, you commented that we’re a highly regulated industry and for good reason. Because you can’t just pull off to the side of the road and call AAA with something bad happens. And it always happens in a place that’s not good. But in our industry, if something bad does happen in general, our industry can track a part back all the way to, to an individual O-ring and its lot. And part of that is because we keep very good records, but it’s also because parts in the aircraft are marked. (41:44):


So if we start stripping the ink off of parts, we’ve lost that access to knowledge. And then you have to think about all of the adhesives and the fabrics and the paints in a fabric aircraft, the fabric is actually structural. We think about, ‘Oh, we’re just gonna strip that pretty paint job off that rich doctor’s airplane.’ Well, if we’ve got a fabric airplane and we strip it the paint off, or the adhesive, the wing is no longer a wing and now you have a rock. And it doesn’t stop there, then we have to worry about distribution. If the coating on the inside of an above ground storage tank strips out, all of that stuff that got stripped out ends up in a fuel filter on an aircraft. We worry about, ‘Is it stable? Is it stable when it’s stored in that above ground storage tank? Is it stable in a little tank at that small airport? Is it stable in a drum? Is it stable in the aircraft? Does it stay blended?’ The octane enhancer doesn’t do anyone any good if it fell out and is sitting at the bottom of a storage tank in Nome, Alaska. So, all of this is done for an entire industry.


JP Ervin (43:00): Well, I just had one last question I want to ask you about. I, I am asking everyone that we’re interviewing for this episode, one of the joys of my job is I get to talk to people in industries I dreamed of working in as a kid. And aviation is one of those major ones. I was obsessed with aircraft.


Melanie Thom (43:16): Silly boy.


JP Ervin (43:16): Boy. Thanks. I know. <laugh> But I wanted to ask how you got into this business because I think a lot of people might imagine you have a very fun job getting to work in the aerospace industry.


Melanie Thom (43:29): Sure. So I’m an analytical chemist, by training, by trade, and by vocation. I actually started in tires. <laugh> I designed sidewalls and tires and a job opportunity opened up with what was then Allied Signal Bendix. And I discovered working in fuel and I very much like making airplanes go and stop. A whole other part of my life. But I actually fell into aviation sort of by accident. So I’ve never looked back.


JP Ervin (44:15): Melanie Thom, thanks so much for joining us on this episode. It’s been great talking to you.


Melanie Thom (44:21): Thank you for having me.


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