Aeronautics: Water Out of Fuel

While Tex Rankin was making a new record of 131 consecutive outside loops high above him, Lieut. Alford Joseph Williams went through his upside-down falling-leaf stunt one day last week at the Southern Air Pageant at Charlotte, N. C. Suddenly Lieut. Williams’ motor quit. Unable to reach the runway without endangering the crowd, he crashed his plane into an embankment, was not badly hurt. Lieut. Williams’ reason for the accident: water in the gasoline.

Because of that ever present hazard, fuel is ordinarily strained into an airplane’s tanks through chamois or billiard-table felt, which are impervious to water. The process is slow and not without danger of fire, as the strainer easily becomes clogged with sediment and the funnel full of gasoline is constantly exposed to static electricity. Last week it. was disclosed that the Army Air Corps had adopted a filtering device with neither of these bad features, invented by Master Sergeant David Samiran, stationed at Wright Field, Ohio. The invention, known as a segregator, is based on the difference in specific gravity between gasoline and water. Water and sediment are diverted through a waste valve. The segregator was patented by Sergeant Samiran, who will be permitted to collect royalties for its commercial application.

Another device, sold commercially, consists of an arrangement of 200-mesh screens which slow up the flow of fuel just enough to let the water follow its own inclination to separate from the gasoline. Through it, fuel can be poured at the rate of 55 to 60 gal. per min. Chamois or felt will pass fuel only 20-25 gal. per min.