Penn State researchers turn coal into jet fuel
As every pilot and mechanic knows, high temperatures are the bane of any engine.

As every pilot and mechanic knows, high temperatures are the bane of any engine. But as engineers strive to design smaller, more powerful turbine engines by adding compressor stages, the compression ratio goes up and so does the temperature of the ram air. At a compression ratio of about 20 to 25, ram-air cooling becomes inefficient. The solution, researchers believe, lies with cooling the air before it goes into the combustor. One way to do this involves adding a heat-exchanger using a heat-sink fluid.

That fluid could be jet fuel, if it remains stable at high enough temperatures. But jet-A and JP8 (its military equivalent), become unstable at about 300 degrees F, meaning that the molecular structure of the fuel begins to decompose. This creates carbon deposits that foul valves, nozzles and other parts inside turbine engines.

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