Advanced Fuel Systems Ltd designed and built an auxiliary jet fuel tank to enable the car to carry an additional 400 litres of Jet A during the high speed test programme. This is crucial as it will allow us to run full reheat (afterburner) for longer durations and reach speeds north of 500mph, while also letting the EJ200 jet engine idle for longer – a key stage of a mechanically sympathetic shutdown.
The new tank has an aluminium powder coated outer, plus a flexible composite safety fuel cell and explosion suppressant foam lining, and is designed to temporarily occupy the rocket APU bay and make use of the existing mountings in the chassis. Two transfer pumps, each capable of delivering 1 kilogram of fuel per second into the main jet fuel tank, complete the temporary setup.
The auxiliary tank is filled from the single point refuelling valve in the main tank and is first to empty, which ensures that the main tank, with its complex baffle and trap-door system to control fuel under acceleration and deceleration, is the last to empty.
Our technicians, together with Jonathan Tubb, Managing Director of Advanced Fuel Systems, fitted the auxiliary fuel tank last week and it went in perfectly. Great work by everyone involved!
