FAA Getting Serious About Unleaded Fuel
Flight Global is reporting that the FAA is requesting US$10M in funding over the next 5 years to help rid the world of tetra-ethyl lead in AVGAS. They will use the funding to develop both a 100LL replacement as well as modifications for engines that can’t run on unleaded fuel.
Click here to read the full article on Flight Global
That’s only a few decades late, but hopefully any such fuel will come to our shores sooner rather than later. The Americans are trying to get rid of 100L, while we still have a good part of the country on 100/130. The green 100/130 AVGAS is nasty stuff and around Parafield, some fuel-injected C172s are having real trouble with it. Not to mention the Rotax engine in my SportStar, which is why I now fill it with premium unleaded MOGAS, the fuel it was designed for.
While the lead going will probably be welcomed by the oil companies as well, in the end they are still going to be making a relatively low volume of fuel that is not very profitable for them. So in the long term I still don’t see a real future for AVGAS and am keeping a keen eye on the development of diesel engines that can run on Jet-A.
