Seymour Johnson AFB first to test new fueling initiative

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Ashley Williamson
  • 4th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
SEYMOUR JOHNSON AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. --  As part of a new military-wide green project, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina was selected as a testing installation for a new biobased oil used in government owned vehicles.

Biobased four cycle motor oil is synthetic oil being tested in four GOVs to potentially replace the petroleum based oil the military has used for years.

"[The oil that is currently being used] is refined petroleum," said Master Sgt. William Martinez, 4th Logistics Readiness Squadron vehicle management superintendent. "Basically, it's remanufactured oil that the government uses across the board. This will put us in line with the Green Procurement Program that is mandated by the Department of Defense. It's about a 12 to 18 month test that we're going to be doing on four vehicles. We're going to be monitoring how well the engine is running with this oil, gasoline consumption, and track how many miles we will be putting on the vehicles with this oil."

The biobased oil is managed by the Defense Logistics Agency, is made in the United States and would reduce the need to buy petroleum oil from overseas, said George Handy, DOD biobased motor oil demonstration program manager. The use of the oil DOD-wide would significantly decrease the amount of petroleum utilized by DOD.

The Seymour Johnson AFB GOVs test run is meant to ensure the biobased oil meets the Air Force instruction requirement for oil changes, which is 7,500 miles or 18 months. The new oil can last up to 10,000 miles before needing changed.

A series of activities will be performed to identify performance, data requirements and selection of demonstration products. The financial and environmental impacts will be assessed during the series of activities as well. These activities will also identify documents (maintenance manuals, technical manuals, service instructions, etc.) that may need revisions to ease the DOD transition.

"What's going to happen first is we bring in the vehicles with the oil that we are using; we'll drain that, and halfway through the drain we'll collect a sample that we'll send to the company to get tested," Martinez said. "Then we load the new oil into the engine, and after 12 months we'll drop the oil and test it at that time so we can compare it to see how well the oil's lasting versus the current oil that we use. If the data comes out in favor of the bioblend then that will be information that we can send off to DOD to approve us to use this oil."

Though Seymour Johnson AFB is the first base to demonstrate the use of the new oil, three other Air Force bases: Luke Air Force Base, Arizona; Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington and Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana will also be demonstrating its effects.

"It's a biobased synthetic oil, so it's a full synthetic oil and it's derived from plant molecules instead of being derived from petroleum molecules," Handy said. "There's a varying percentage of plant-based, synthetic molecule oil blended with this petroleum.

The additional benefit is this will burn cleaner. So your tailpipe emissions will be reduced and it will increase your mileage."

Handy went on to say, the new engine oils are overall more sustainable and environmentally friendly than the current military-wide, petroleum based oil. The biobased oils also provide a great decline in lifecycle carbon footprint, including carbon dioxide use emissions, compared to petroleum based four cycle engine oils.