It’s been just over a year since the Eliminate Aviation Gasoline Lead Emissions (EAGLE) initiative was announced, and the task force has been hard at work since to achieve their set goal of having an unleaded fuel ready by 2030.
To recap the first year of EAGLE, AMT was granted an exclusive interview with Robert Olislagers, senior coordinator for the EAGLE initiative.
AMT: To start, please give us a brief overview of how EAGLE’s first year went.
Olislagers: Obviously, we’re still getting our feet wet. I think the difficult part is that right now some communities are getting ahead of where we had hoped to be with regard to EAGLE. And that’s not only to Eliminate Aviation Gasoline Lead Emissions as our mission, but to do that in a safe and orderly manner. And by safe, I mean that we wanted to make sure that 100 low lead (100LL) would be available while we were working collectively on making that transition.
Some airports have decided to just go ahead and eliminate, swap out 100LL completely with UL94 that Swift (Fuels) currently manufactures or blends. And that’s a little bit of a problem because it creates gaps in coverage, you may inadvertently end up having pilots pushing it and end up with fuel starvation if they can’t find the proper fuel or in fact end up having to put 94 in when that is not recommended for especially the high compression engine aircraft.
So we really wanted to focus on making sure that 100LL remained available until we had a unleaded fuel, not just a 94 octane, but a high octane unleaded fuel available nationwide. So that is the goal.
AMT: What candidate unleaded fuels are there currently and where in the approval process are they?
Olislagers: We’ve got two fuels in the PAFI (Piston Engine Aviation Fuels Initiative) program and then also in the STC program. GAMI received its STC back in September of 2022, and Swift is still working on theirs and they anticipate that they will get their STC as well in 2023. So we’re making some progress.
The PAFI fuels are going through the various gates and currently we are in the mini detonation and mini durability tests. I’m not sure where Swift is within the STC program and obviously GAMI has got the fuel out there already, although it’s not being marketed commercially just yet. They’re still working on some refining issues, and I think they’ve addressed the distribution questions, and there are certainly airports already looking to get that fuel out as soon as possible.
AMT: What have been some of the challenges with getting these fuels to market? What might people not be understanding about the process and why it needs the time it does?
Olislagers: Number one, the average age of aircraft today is roughly 50 years. The average age of an automobile is about 13 years, according to the latest statistics that I’ve seen. So, the turnover in the automobile industry is much faster than in aircraft. We still have airplanes that are exceedingly old. I’ve had the pleasure of flying some very old aircraft from the late '20s on, and so, that’s part of the challenge. We don’t have that kind of turnover that we’ve seen in the automobile industry.
The other big challenge I think is really finding a proper solution to prevent engine knocking and bring up the octane high enough to where – with the especially more modern high compression engines – we can get the proper performance out of those aircraft. So blending those fuels without lead but using other additives.
[Then there’s the] challenge of making sure we don’t end up with deposits and problems with seals and whatnot. It’s got to be compatible with everything that the fuel touches from beginning to end. And so that has been a real challenge, and I think that’s driven a lot in large part because of the constantly changing altitudes that aircraft fly at. And so, it’s always been in my mind, is why have we not developed, for example, some fuel management systems, automated fuel management systems that can handle that as opposed to us having to constantly change mixture settings and so on and so forth.
So, we’re still dealing with some older technology.
AMT: Is there a chance that aircraft will need to be upgraded or their engines modified to accommodate unleaded fuel?
Olislagers: Certainly the automotive industry went that route and we don’t know yet. I think it’s too early to say that whether we will have a single drop-in fuel or we may end up with maybe a couple of different blends, very much like the automotive industry where we have regular and premium gasoline. And I think some folks still have three different blends available depending on what your engine manufacturer suggests. So that’s always a possibility and that’s why we have an R&D pillar as well. I think at the same time, it behooves us to look at modernizing some of the things that are out there that we’re still not dealing with in terms of modern technology.
Our focus right now is strictly on the unleaded fuel issue first and foremost, and looking at the fuel side. If we need to start making technological changes, that window is coming up pretty quick because that’s not done overnight either. You have to develop STCs as well for that. So we hope to avoid that. So that’s why our focus is on the fuel side only at this point, but we are certainly starting to get a better understanding of what some of these technological changes might look like.
AMT: What then should our audience or aircraft mechanics and pilots be most aware of at this point with where EAGLE is?
Olislagers: I think for the mechanics and people working on engines that are burning 100LL, I think it’s a safety issue. Now the impact on adults is perhaps not as significant as it is in the formative years with infants, but handle with care. That’s one of the first things that I would recommend if your handling leaded fuel.
[Lead] is a toxin. It’s a neurotoxin and it’s a very fine particle both on the emission side as well as when you get it on your hands. It can permeate through the skin. So, I would say just be careful handling it. I had myself tested, being around GA airplanes for many decades, and fortunately I’m below the CDC rate, but I’m expecting the CDC rate to going down from 3.5 micrograms per deciliter. That probably is going to go to zero here once we have the endangerment findings. There are no safe levels, I think that’s really the bottom line.
AMT: What then can expect to see out of EAGLE in 2023?
Olislagers: I think, certainly for the audience out there is we’re going to hopefully roll out some of this UL 94 fuel fairly quickly. It’s already being used by a number of airports that have been using it for probably the better part of a decade. And so we’re going to see more airports going out there. One of the really big advantages of not having leaded fuel is much cleaner burning engines. You may not quite need the amount of maintenance that is required.
I mean there’s a lot of upside to this. If we remember, leaded fuel back in the day and having to break in the car and if you had a 50,000-mile automobile, it was time to think of a new one, and one that went a 100,000 miles was exemplary. Nowadays, that’s not even a question. So I think the benefits of going unleaded also provide a return on the investment if we have to make some modifications to the engines, et cetera.
But we’re definitely coming to that point where we have to make those decisions whether we can reach the high octane requirements and we think we can for the most part. And then beyond that, if there are going to be any mechanical technological changes, this is now the time to start working on that. So I think it’s going to be an exciting 2023. I think we’ll see some pretty significant decisions made through the executive committee representing the vast majority of the aviation industry associations. Ditto with the American Petroleum Institute, which is a partner with this, and then of course the FAA and the Hughes Techical Center in Atlantic City.
We’re all working closely together. It is a coalition, an unusual one. We don’t call it a partnership because that implies sort of the P3 process, which is a little different. But we’re a coalition working very closely with each other. We have FAA people at the table. Then the conversations are quite candid... So I’m very hopeful that we will have some real answers this coming year.
