Gas Tanks

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An inerting system is a device that attempts to increase the safety of a fuel tank, ball mill, or other sealed or closed-in tank that contains highly flammable material, by pumping nitrogen, steam, carbon dioxide, or some other inert gas or vapor into its air space in order to displace oxygen. The effect of these systems is either to eliminate the oxygen completely, or to reduce it to a negligible level. Without sufficient oxygen in the tank, the fuel cannot ignite, and explosions cannot occur.

Use in military aircraft

The first large-scale use of inerting systems for military aircraft fuel tanks was by the USSR in WWII. Mass produced LA-5 and LA-7 fighter aircraft by the Lavochkin design group incorporated an ingenious device to flood the main body fuel tank, mounted dangerously in front of the cockpit, with a huge volume of exhaust gas channeled through a plenum chamber, inerting it in combat. This device was hailed by pilots such as the Lavochkin ace, Kozhedub, and seems to have worked well. A more extensive system was used on the famous and numerous Petlyakov PE-2 attack bomber, a twin-engined aircraft, which utilized CO₂, again from the engine exhaust gases, that vented the tanks as fuel was consumed, eliminating the explosive atmosphere. Inerting systems have been used in US military aircraft starting with a 1950 version of the United States' B-47 bomber jet, which sublimated dry ice to produce gaseous carbon dioxide and pump it into the fuel tanks whenever the fuel pumps were active or whenever in-flight refueling was in process. It was developed by Charles Kimmel, an engineer who spent nearly 50 years in the aerospace industry. This system was implemented largely over concern over static electricity discharges during in-flight refueling, and over fires that might start during aerial combat.

During the Vietnam War, it became painfully apparent that fuel tank inerting ought to be a requirement for military jets, as thousands of aircraft were lost due to enemy ground fire; analysis indicated that fuel system fire and explosion was the major cause of aircraft loss from enemy gun and artillery fire.

Military inerting systems have used nitrogen gas (on experimental versions of the F-86 and F-100), liquid nitrogen (on the C-5A and XB-70), and halon gas (on the F-16 and F-117). The inerting system on the F-22 Raptor pumps the air used to pressurize the fuel tank through a filter which extracts oxygen from the air. In addition to the active inerting system that displaces oxygen, the fuel tanks of some aircraft, like the F-15, are filled with a special foam that adds weight but reduces flammability. The goal is to reduce oxygen content of the air in the tank to below 9%, down from the normal atmospheric oxygen content of 21%.

Read more at Wikipedia.org