So Bunker C is actually the residue from crude oil that has been completely refined. After all the Gasoline, Diesel, Kerosene and Lube oil range materials are distilled out of the crude in the atmospheric tower, the "residual" fuel oil is what's left. This was important for the Navy for two reasons. First, with all the valuable fractions removed, Bunker C "residual" fuel oil was extremely cheap. Secondly, with all the lighter fractions gone, there was no chance of the fuel vaporizing into a cloud and exploding inside the ship. The Japanese lost several ships towards the end of WWII by fueling them with unrefined crude oil that still contained the lighter fractions. When the ship was damaged in battle, the released fuel vaporized and caused a massive explosion. Bunker C will only burn if preheated, and atomized with a steam nozzle is droplets small enough to vaporize in the boiler and then burn. You could drop a road flare into a bucket of Bunker C and nothing would happen.
This is completely correct. Bunker C is a residual fuel oil, what is left after all the "good stuff" is refined out. Crude oil is likely to go boom boom baby in a boiler.
It would be wasteful and dangerous to run straight crude oil. The Japanese were always short of gasoline range materials for avgas, and diesel for marine use. They only ran straight crude a few times because they didn’t have enough tankers to get the crude back to a refinery and their fleet had no other choice.
@@engineermike6150 Just to point out they didn't have the tankers because USN Submarines had sunk or damaged many of them. For a period of 42-43 as I recall the target priority list's first two entries were 1) Aircraft Carriers and then 2) Tankers. And as the IJN ASW got more proficient the number 2 on the list became destroyers!
"Standard" is a standard sample to compare the operational samples against. It is clean, new oil in a clean bottle. At some point in time, someone replaced the standard bottle and repurposed it for operational samples. The object is to hold the standard sample side by side with the operational sample to compare. You are inspecting the sample for particulates, water present as suspended droplets, or the ever-dreaded "milkshake". You draw a new standard sample from the fresh clean oil used to fill the equipment on its most recent oil change. We drew samples every four hours, more often if we had a problem with carbon rings. Now that would be a find if you ever came across a set of unmolested carbon rings. Every new watch stander starts out as a "Messenger" and it is their duty to take readings hourly, take oil samples, and most importantly, make coffee and wake up the relief watch.
@@Colonel_Overkill There were test samples inserted into the stream of samples to make sure the crew were doing their job. Detecting the test sample resulted in a chit for getting a milkshake from the galley.
Thanks. I know absolutely nothing about engines save it is supposed to start when I hit the start switch or turn the key as appropriate. I know nothing but figure that admission is preferable to killing equipment with incompetence.
No navy experience here, but we also leave fuel samples to sit for a specified period of time to check for materials settling out of it. Is that something that would be done on a ship?
As a Retired Navy Fuel and Oil Specialist. I can tell you that it was F-76 or DFM as he said. It has the same flash point requirements as F-40 aka JP-5, or Jet-B aviation fuel. I taught the school, and re-wrote the courses back in the early 1990's
I guess that is how we switched mid-trip from DFM to JP5 once when we were in a hurry to get to the Red Sea for Desert Shield in 1990. Zoomed all the way across the Atlantic and Med without slowing down. I guess we were burning JP5 by the time we got to the Suez and didn't refuel until the Red Sea. It was pretty cool. Only our 2 submarines kept up the whole way.
I worked in a power plant that ran on #6 bunker oil. Had to heat it to 120° to even get it to flow to the boilers. It was built in 1904 still had most of the original equipment in it. Was a great place to work
When I was a kid back in the mid-60s I made friends with the school custodian. He ran the boiler since he was a boiler tech in the Navy. I remember it burned #6. I learned a little about boilers from him which I still remember.
Lots of memories brought back with this video. Served from 82-94 Boiler Tech and a large part of that spent as the one of the ships Oil Kings. We were in charge of all the testing and transferring of all the ships waters, fuels and lube oils. On both ships that I served as an Oil King our labs were very close to one of the firerooms. The firerooms and enginerooms would would send their messengers up with the lube oil samples of all the machinery at specified intervals for testing and we would call down to the EOW, Engineer of the Watch with the results. We were also tasked with testing the boiler water and injecting chemicals ie DSP Disodium Phosphate and TSP Trisodium Phosphate to keep everything in range. On a side note we had the New Jersey in our battle group once and it was a pleasure to be able to witness those 16"ers do their thing. I can still hear them.
1986 West Pac I was on the USS Wabash when the New Jersey fired her cannons. The percussion rattled our ship to the core and it was an amazing sight and feel to behold.
A good fuel oil sample is typically yellow in color. Some commercial sources use other dyes resulting in different colors; but DFM/F-76 coming from a US Navy support would be yellow. As dark as your sample is--it is definitely past the best use by date! Your sample jar rack would hold lube oil, and water samples. Fuel oil samples (at least on USN gas turbine ships) are typically disposed of after the testing/inspection is complete. Still a cool find for this former DDG/FFG engineer.
Honestly, that find is probably up there with the nuclear keys in terms of really cool finds, because as interesting and fascinating as the fighting equipment is (And it REALLY is), the engines and the fuel are the literal life blood of the ship. And, having a quick look at how many engine techs have appeared in the comments, it's the catalyst for getting an insight into how crews used and maintained an incredible piece of engineering.
I live in San Diego and just convinced my wifes whole family to come with me to visit Battleship Iowa in 2 weeks up in LA. None of them have ANY interest in military history, but I feel like once they see the incredible power and engineering of it they will love the tour. And thanks to you Ryan! I can give them extra info and fun facts about the ship while we walk around!
I was in San Diego earlier this summer, and I dragged my girlfriend along to see the Midway. She went along to humor me, but she got super into it, reading all the plaques, taking a bunch of pictures. We were there the whole day, they pretty much had to kick us out lol.
I had to do that when we went to Oahu. I was adamant about going to Pearl Harbor. I was going by myself if I had to didn’t care. They all decided to come and thanked me after as it opened their eyes a little bit to what these men and women dealt with. Standing over Arizona on that memorial is unforgettable 20-30 people on it and dead quiet could hear a pin drop.
You will be disappointed with the tour route on the Iowa. It's like a just 01 level and up. No route to the engine rooms or basicly anywhere deep inside the ship.
I was a Boiler Technician for 10 years. The oil samples you have there are the daily ones, the top row is the what we call the standard. That’s what you compare you samples to after you get them. It usually done on the mid watch. DFM is tested by someone in the oil lab. To check for water and sediment particles.this is done before a fuel tank is put on suction to feed the boiler.
So what's your take on the stuff inside the glass jar? Still good after 30 years sitting there? I'm guessing not. I know gasoline definitely wouldn't survive stored like that. Would the color and consistency change over the decades?
During the Iranian hostage crisis, the ship that I was stationed-on USS D R Ray DD-971 left Subic Bay on Thanksgiving day and steamed all the way to the Persian Gulf at a blistering 28 knots. Upon arrival to Bahrain the ship on loaded 450k gallons of JP-5. Kept going north to south in the gulf using split-plant mode. Refueled 4 more times over 12 weeks with JP-5 averaging 125k per fill-up. Atlantic fleet paid for the fuel so CO said get the good stuff. Fuel was so clean, never had to clean purifiers or engine-room fuel filters. Held up to the light the fuel looked like drinking water. CO relaxed main-space manning requirements, main-spaces went unmanned for 4 months, only two rovers round the clock to check main-space equipment. In 79&80 this was amazing to have all of engineering unmanned underway.
Ryan, Bunker C is not unrefined or barely refined crude oil. It’s the residual oil left after the lighter fractions have been distilled off. It is actually a refined fuel, because it has gone through the same process used to separate out diesel, kerosene, and gasoline from crude oil. The reason that it was used in ships is simple: it’s cheap. The lighter fractions flow easily and ignite easily, even at room temperature, so they were useful for things like motor vehicles that were expected to be able to start up quickly on demand. Bunker C is very thick at ambient temperates and needs to be preheated to allow it to be pumped and ignited. This made it less useful than the more commonly used lighter oils, but it also made it cheaper. So for applications where the need to heat the tankage wasn’t an issue and where the thing using the fuel didn’t need to turn off and on a lot, it was a very economical fuel choice. This is why it tended to be used for ships, power plants, and large heating boilers; the need to keep t he tanks warm wasn’t too much of an issue, and the huge cost savings of using a cheaper fuel easily outweighed the cost of the tank heating system.
For F76/DFM, we test the fuel prior to taking it onboard, when transferring it from storage to service tanks, and prior to placing it on suction to go to a boiler or diesel or gas turbine engine.
When I went into the navy, steamships burned bunker oil, a thick black oil. But as I was leaving in 1971, the USN ships were being converted to burn jet fuel to make oil storage easier on the carriers. Besides their own boilers, carriers carries fuel to replenish their escorts. We refueled about every 5 days. Lead bars were installed in the fuel tanks to make up the difference in weight of lighter fuel. Your sample looks like commercial shipping calls MDO. Either they switched twice or switched to MDO in 1970.
This is why it took so many men to operate these ships because even some of the little things that most don't even think about are major deals when running a machine like a battleship.
My ships also had lube oil and fuel oil purifiers to keep each type clean, which was tested by a "clear" (no particles) and "bright" (you could read a maintenance card through it) visual test.
Oh yep, cleaning the Lube Oil purifier was a hot, messy job. I remember taking that big ass bore brush and dunking it into a bucket of what, probably DFM or PD-680, and swabbing it back and forth in that cylinder to get most of the sediment off the walls, and finishing up by hand with rags until it was sparkling clean. You had to precisely align the fins that went inside to witness marks on the outside of the tube to keep it balanced for the high RPM the purifier attained in use. The large amount of trash cans all over the engine room? Most of those weren't for actual trash, they stored bales (yes, BALES) of clean rags. And they of course served as chairs for the Watch standers. There was also the SICLOS evolution! Shift, Inspect, and Clean Lube Oil Strainer. Our strainer was on the opposite side of the lower deck from the purifier.
A ship or railroad locomotive with a big V-12 or V-16 diesel engine probably runs that fuel, or could if it weren't for regulations. When we were expediting our trip to Desert Shield on the USS Saratoga in '90 we scooted at _high_ speed all the way across the Atlantic and Mediterranean both without slowing down. By the time we got to the Suez Canal the boilers were drinking JP5. True story. We didn't hit a gas station until the Red Sea. Did New Jersey have an "Oil King"?
The Humvees and generators stateside ran on regular diesel fuel. When we deployed to Iraq in 2003-04, we ran everything on JP-8. I am told by our mechanics that the JP-8 really cleaned out the engines. It worked just fine for our tour.
No, not for regulations. Before the government even dreamed of regulating combustion engines, the engine manufacturers realized that diesel fuel worked the best in the medium speed diesel engines. Bunker oil couldn't be heated in the fuel tanks when the engine needed to be started in cold weather. Also, the only engine to ever run on bunker oil was a turbine. No rail service piston engine ran bunker oil.
On the Midway we had a dedicated Oil Lab for all shipboard fuel, lubricating oil, and for fresh/feed water. We also ran the evaporators making feed/fresh water. We used centrifuges to spin out lube oil/fuel oil to get samples of contaminants to determine the type of contamination (salt water/fresh water). Plus numerous test on water samples (never ending test).
That's for tax purposes. Fuel is taxed very heavily in Ireland, but agricultural and shipping gets tax free fuel. They put a dye in the tax free stuff, and if you're caught on the road with coloured fuel in your tank you're in big trouble.
@@MatthewMakesAU Same here in the US. You won’t save any money by running off road diesel after the first DOT stop where your tanks are checked to see what color your fuel is. The price difference between on road and off road diesel isn’t worth the fines. Having said that, many years ago I knew a person that would fill their diesel powered VW Rabbit right out of their home heating oil tank that was in their garage. Their was very little chance of anyone checking the fuel on a passenger car.
@@ssmt2 That fuel dye usually has a UV component that will glow under a black light. That one little drip that the driver missed will show up quite nicely all the way from the scalehouse...
The bottles are used to test for water. A check for water in the fuel is required to be performed on a fire room day tank (the tank which holds fuel just prior to being pumped into the burner front) before the tank is placed in service. Water in fuel tanks was a common issue. In fact in the late 70‘s i was chief engineer on a destroyer that went DIW in the adriatic sea at 1 AM because thw watch failed to perform this test and there was about 3 feet of water in the oncoming day tank. The water entered the tank due to leaking valves and an unauthorised use of an eductor to remove water from the tank. We bobbed around in the dark for séveral hours while we figured out how to restart by using the heat left in the boiler.
Eductors are pumps without moving parts. They use the energy of flowing fluid to pump a larger volume of fluid using the venturi effect. They are commonly used in bilges as they don't care if the suck up a bunch of debris.
The eductor on this particular tin can could also be used to remove whatever is in the bottom of a fuel tank…. In this case the valves were incorectly repositioned after use and the water flowed back into the fuel tank….a lot of water.
Ryan, I've been watching your content for a while and it's really good to see your knowledge develop, your delivery become slick and your obvious joy in your job. And yes, you have a great job.
Brings back memories. I was the MPA on USS Cleveland, LPD-7, in the early 90's, in charge of the two main engines and boilers. We had a great crew of MM's and BT's taking all of the lube and fuel oil samples, maintaining the equipment, doing light offs, all of the inspections, drills, deployments, and so on. I had a chance to tour New Jersey a few years back. That's quite a ship. Glad that she is being well taken care of.
Oil king question, How many main fuel oil tanks; and what are their markings? 7B DFM bottle probably goes to the fuel tanks for the space boilers, 7A and 7B. On the Gas turbine ship's we had 2 main fuel tanks per engine room or generator set. That way you could be running off one and filling the other one. Or if one became contaminated or leaked you still had a fuel Of course there was also emergency suction that could be aligned to draw directly off the storage tanks. but you ran the risk of clogging filters
That is a fuel and lube oil sample rack. Lube oil is checked daily. Some of those bottles should have had the current sample, the prior day's sample, and the standard is what it looked like when new.
F-76 or DFM is what we also used in Spruance and Arliegh Burke Class main propulsion or GTG gas turbines. Or JP5 used for helos which we could cross connect to in emergencies. Been along time but seems like we had a Penske-Martin flashpoint tester. F76 flashpoint was supposed to be 140deg F ?… we used 2190TEP for main reduction gear lubrication and also for CRP controllable reversal pitch propeller actuation. Cool.. brings back memories.
When you spend you life walking through history, just occasionally, you stumble over something that you have walked by all the time. I am sure, if you were to research the manuals, you would find all the information on oil sample requirements. Very cool find.
IC1 (SW) Johnson ret. Ryan, That DFM you have in that jar looks more like coffee than DFM. The DFM should be nice and clear with a yellowish tint. That stuff has more of a look like thinned-down bunker oil than DMF. Also, on the USS Wasp (LHD-1), while I was there, the square bottles were used for lube oil samples, and the DFM was taken in the round bottles so that they could get the DFM spinning inside. The centrifugal force would concentrate any dirt or water at the center.
IC1: What would your guess be for the PBX installed during the '80's refit? I'm leaning towards AT&T Dimension 2000. FWIW, I agree that DFM should be yellowish and crystal clear. Almost 3 years on an AOR, I've seen fuel once or twice...
Ah all the lube oils. Brings back memories of pulling lube oil from the purifiers i think it was every 4 hours on a modern DDG as a PSM underway. 4 samples inlet and outlet samples from 2 purifiers. Thats an incredible find with the fuel oil.
As a former UNREP rig crew, that little jar brings back memories of the hurry-up-and-wait of UNREP fueling: we'd all bust our asses on both ships to get lines and hoses across, the customer is working hard to hold position, our helmsman is working hard to hold course, we finally get everything set up, we start pumping, then immediately stop as a couple guys in purple work vests and cranials fill a little jar with fuel and take it away. Then both crews stand and stare at each other across the water for about 10 minutes until the "grapes" declare the fuel sample acceptable. Only then could we really commence pumping. I always wondered where those little jars went... Was USS NEW JERSEY given the equipment to receive UNREP fuel or cargo? I bet she could receive cargo. That might be as simple as a block on a bulkhead and the deck crew hauling on a line. I think the fueling system is a bit more involved on the customer's end.
I was the guy topside on the receiving end of that hose checking to make sure the pump-side guys weren't using the UNREP as an opportunity to strip the water out of their tanks and into ours. During one refueling the initial sample looked great, but later on one of the periodic samples ended up a bottle of water with a little F76 sprinkled in. We ended up with a few thousand gallons of water in one of the storage tanks. My LPO at the time said that it was not unheard of. Almost used up a whole tube of water indicating paste trying to figure out how deep the water was in the contaminated tank.
Bunker C is Not unrefined crude oil! It is the opposite . It is what is left after you refine out the gas, diesel , lube oil etc. The bottom of the barrel ! Unrefined crude oil has everything still in it and very dangerous since the gasoline and naphtha fumes are very volatile.
Although more refined than bunker crude diesel fuel can be easily contaminated. Condensation which was probably experienced on the ship can result in stuff actually growing in diesel tanks. Just ask any sailor who has had to deal with clogged filters and injectors due to "diesel bug".
My understanding of bunker oil is that though the older, unrefined, heavier oils had a larger fraction of carbon in the hydrocarbon chains which should have more energy per unit volume, but burned really dirty and leaves major deposits which are exhausting to clean out. USS Texas may be a source on earlier fuel knowledge.
The New Jersey probably got little or no Bunker C. By the time it entered service, the Navy had shifted to NSFO (Navy Special Fuel Oil) which is Bunker C cut with a distillate to reduce the viscosity.
If I'm not mistaken NFSO is interchangeable with Residual Fuel Oil No. 5? They generally cut it with just enough normal heating oil so it flows without heating it.
From what I can tell NSFO is #5 or Bunker B and can be its own fraction or #6 thinned out to meet the viscosity requirements. I would imagine that as the fuel bunkers are located towards the outside of the hull New Jersey could still have had heaters to guarantee the fuel was easily pumped when operating in cold waters and I think these have shown up in a video or two. Still needs preheating for atomization
2190 TEP was the only lube oil used in our engine room. TEP stood for Tri Ethylene Phosphate. Basically a very strong detergent oil. It was basically indestructible. Dirty oil would be pumped or poured into a steam heated settling tank and then run through a De Laval centrifugal oil purifier. It came out looking like cooking oil. Surprised to hear it wasn't converted to NSFO. Navy Special Fuel Oil.
How long ago? When I was in 85-91 , 2190TEP was labeled on our msds as TEP= Turbine Extreme Pressure. Interesting. 2 was the grade of oil, 190 was the viscosity. Anyhow it jarred a lot of memories as top watch telling my messanger to get my oil samples.
On frigate I served_ I recall the small space for the fuel and water king- Boiler Techs. Don't remember if the handled lube oil samples there or not. Ship had a Ellison Door- Fume tight not water tight - the water tight hatch down to fireroom- Don't remember if entry to that space was just a joiner door or water tight. - Is there a comparable space some where on the BB? If you have a cloudy sample - water or oil or fuel? How do you determine what causes the cloudiness. That Sample looks like 4 ounce (half cup) at most to me- so 1/32 (or ~3% of a gallon). Hum nice teaser- way much less that I was expecting.
Fresh fuel does have a little bit of water dissolved in it and a few microbes that live in that water and feed off the hydrocarbons. Their waste is the garbage found in the bottom of diesel fuel tanks along with the ultrafine particulates that are also present in the fuel. I don't know about ships but jet aircraft are sampled daily and fuel service equipment also. On the FFG's that I went to sea on, they had the "Oil King" who processed and logged fuel samples from the ships fuel tanks along with lube oils and hydraulic fluids. DFM may be darker than jet fuel to begin with but not that dark.
you mentioned relamping one of the fire rooms. would these spaces have had incandescent or fluorescent lighting during WWII? fluorescent lighting has been around for a long time (cold start tubes since about the middle of WWII) so its possible that they were used for the lighting. just curious if you knew
This was covered in a different video. The shipboard lighting during WWII was incandescent, it wasn't switched over to fluorescent until one of the later refits.
In my Navy career (1986-2006), engineers always analyzed a sample of fuel at the start of an underway fuel replenishment. If it was good, they'd continue to take on fuel from the supply ship. (It was always good.)
Wow... All these years working on the museum ship. And you still find new stuff. Well, technically they're not new, they were left there by the previous crew. But still a good find.
With dfm Fuel oil in a boiler you really care about the water content, so take your sample, let it settle out and see if yah got water either salt water or the condensation that develops on the inside of slack fo tanks
I wonder if the bunker fuel was close-to-unrefined crude - I suspect it was actually a heavy fraction of the crude, left behind after the gasoline and diesel fractions had been removed, and one step up from asphalt (which wouldn't be usable, as you'd have to heat it to get it flowing). That old Russian aircraft carrier that is constantly breaking down supposedly burns something that causes it to smoke a lot, probably the old bunker fuel.
The Russians use fuel just one step up from unrefined crude. That said, the smoke and the constant breakdowns speak more towards material condition and maintenance than to fuel type.
I suspect that the second bottle that's next to the sample Diesel fuel bottle would have held the reference (standard) sample, since fuel isn't going to degrade under normal storage conditions. Any unacceptable deviation from standard would be due to contamination, where any deviation from standard for lubricants would be due to either a need for a lubricant change, or due to a mechanical failure.
Vertical Forced Draft Blowers required Lube oil sample every day hours. Machinery once a week if Idle, 1 hour prior to starting, and Daily. The Oil Lab should have those requirements in their files.
When I was on the last Black Oil burner in the Navy (USS Hancock CV-19) Bunker C was referred to as NSFO (Navy Special Fuel Oil) and when I was on the USS Briscoe D-977 and USS Clark FFG-11 we referred to the Fuel as ND (Navy Distillate). Always thought it was funny as we ran our Gas Turbines on what Ryan is calling Diesel Fuel Marine and we ran the ships boats Diesel Engines on JP-5. I was the FO King on the Clark.
It can easily be moved, nothing on a ship other than engines is permanent, and that rack can be stripped to parts to carry through to the main tour line, and fill those bottles with a mix of regular ATF, SAE30 engine oil, 20W 50 engine oil and then finally some oil from an oil change on Ryan's Honda Civic. Range of colours, and you put new at top, then slightly diluted with civic oil in the middle, and half and half at the bottom.
If we built a battleship today, it might include a full oil lab. Modern equipment (ICP-OES, etc) can tell you exactly when lube oil needs to be changed AND it can pinpoint exactly which machinery components are wearing. See a spike in a certain isotope of nickel? Well its probably time to look at the pump bearings.
I'm going to make an educated guess that the lubrication sample bottle rack served two purposes. First, it told you if you needed to change the oil. Granted you would always be topping it off, but you're looking at the aggregate. The second, and perhaps more important reason, is to allow things to settle out in the bottle and then look at the residue. If you noticed something in that small sample of lubrication oil, you may have a larger issue at hand.
Like the old SNL joke, "It's a floor wax and a desert topping", on the boats I was on, 2190TEP was used for lubrication and hydraulic system fluids. Makes it hard to mix things up.
Typical, fuel for the boilers come from a service tank where the fuel has previously been settled. That residuel test fuel in the bottle can be used for the burner lighting torch. I trained in M, D type boilers in the 70's but worked on a P-fired boilers on my first USN assignment. Lube oil samples would be kept locally in spaces, fuel oil samples in the Oil Lab where the Oil King reigned.
Okay, now the questions........ Do the other Iowas have the same sample bottles and racks? Or was it "improved" at some point? If you don't have one, a sample of "Bunker C" would be nice to have on hand for comparison/educational purposes
Fuel oil would have more than likely went to the oil king lab to be examined. While general lubrication oil can be done in an area like that. Possibly they would send a weekly sample to the oil King.
The one that had a sample is prob the reference "standard" sample for that boiler room so theres no "does this look a bit off to you", the empty one would be the only one filled the "standard" propably lost its seal so they made a new one on the go and recycled it out or something
