Contaminated Fuel

Taha

Taha

Well-Known Member
I was curious how many of you have come across contaminated fuel, other than small amounts of water. We recieved a load of avgas on Monday night that looked fine and passed all QC checks. The tank was sumped Tuesday and looked good. Thankfully we never loaded it into a truck. When we sumped the tank today it looked like a blue ink pen had exploded in it. It was very cloudy and you couldn't see the bottom of the bucket. We poured it into another bucket and it left behind a residue that looked like cooking oil. While recirculating the tank the diff pressure jumped from 3 to 13 PSI. After a few phone calls we discovered that the trailer used to deliver it had a previous delivery of unleaded gas with ethanol. The paperwork stated that said trailer was used for avgas only. Now we have 8500 gallons of contaminated gas, a tank that has to be emptied and cleaned, and some filter replacments to do. I've been in line service for a few years and have never come across a situation like this, just wondering if anybody else has ever seen something similar.
 
I have seen one rejected that was 2/3 water. Never had to deal with anything that bad, sounds like a pain in the ass.
 
Taha said:
I was curious how many of you have come across contaminated fuel, other than small amounts of water. We recieved a load of avgas on Monday night that looked fine and passed all QC checks. The tank was sumped Tuesday and looked good. Thankfully we never loaded it into a truck. When we sumped the tank today it looked like a blue ink pen had exploded in it. It was very cloudy and you couldn't see the bottom of the bucket. We poured it into another bucket and it left behind a residue that looked like cooking oil. While recirculating the tank the diff pressure jumped from 3 to 13 PSI. After a few phone calls we discovered that the trailer used to deliver it had a previous delivery of unleaded gas with ethanol. The paperwork stated that said trailer was used for avgas only. Now we have 8500 gallons of contaminated gas, a tank that has to be emptied and cleaned, and some filter replacments to do. I've been in line service for a few years and have never come across a situation like this, just wondering if anybody else has ever seen something similar.
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So is the company that delivered the contaminated gas financially responsible then or who pays? Is your company on the hook for the 8500 gallons because it accepted the shipment? Just curious as it sounds like someone screwed up big time.
 
As far as I know our supplier is dealing with the company that delivered the fuel. I don't think we have to pay anything. We took some samples again this morning and it looked clear, then after it sat for awhile it looked horrible again, so it probably looked good when delivered.
 
We recieved a load not too long ago with green dye in it. We isolated that tank and sent it out for testing. It has passed all of our qc test, but it was green. It came back good for us and we have no problems with it.

Another time, I had to sump a 737 one morning, and I've sumped 30 gallons from tank 2. I cannot imagine what is in the centers of these 37's
 
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