Well shoot, from this article and some of the replies here this has been going on forever. Is this the navy’s version of burn pits?…
Or check valves? Sounds like there are a lot of ways to not be drinking fuel and the navy chose none of them.
You trust check valves a lot more than I do.
There’s no reason why there can’t be a physical barrier between these systems.
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No need to trust check valves. Any connection from potable to non-potable service should be via an air gap or a backflow preventer. They do work. Especially if installed properly and tested regularly.
But yeah that will not stop an inappropriate hard connection using a contaminated hose.
As someone who only drank oily water for a few days this is refreshing to hear. I’ll scratch it off my list of things to worry about giving me cancer down the road. If thousands of veterans have been doing it for decades I should be okay?
This is from book “Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway”.
:Thus, each carrier was crisscrossed by a web of fuel lines, each of which was filled during flight operations with highly flammable liquids. Furthermore, the nature of the cross-connections in the system made it likely that problems in one area of the ship would be carried to unaffected areas via the fuel lines themselves, and potentially all the way to the main avgas storage tanks.:
I’ve no idea how fuel could mix with potable water but if it’s possible then it’s literally only a matter of time. Depends on the setup, how often the configuration is changed (once a year? several times a week?) , how many places a cross-connection exists etc.
Simply making design of the connection more difficult to properly align presumably is going to carry operational costs and other risks. All design decisions are a compromise.
It’s an A/B problem. If a system can be switched than sometimes it’s going to be in the wrong configuration.
The probability can be reduced by design but not eliminated. No need to try and imagine the exact scenario in any one case to understand it’s going to fail sometimes.
If it were a remote possibility, or an occasional problem then I’d tend to agree with you. And obviously there is a cost with considering every failure mode, especially with a warship that needs contingency options for survival.
That being said, it sounds like this is not an occasional problem. If it were you could handle it procedurally. But anecdotally this has been happening for decades across every flat-top. And leadership has failed to acknowledge that it is a problem. I would posit that the cost of resolving this through an engineering solution on $13 billion build, to ensure the health of the 6,000 sailors entrusted to operate it, should not be a line item that gets value-engineered out.
I understand the need to have fresh-water wash systems. Even on a merchant vessel, every fuel purifier has a potable water feed connection. It’s on the distribution side of the PW system though, and there is a check valve and a backflow preventer. You know where there is never a cross connection on a merchant ship? On the inlets to PW tanks. It shouldn’t be that complicated.
And be honest @Kennebec_Captain, as you are clearly a seasoned mariner, if you were the Master of a vessel and started showering in water containing diesel, would you not immediately contact the Chief Engineer, the office, the port engineer if you have one, to request they address this problem so it physically can’t happen again? I would!
Yeah this is what strains credulity. Drill ships have drillwater systems. can i fill them from potable? yes. Are there design features to prevent going the other way - yes. Some other examples are that some drill ships have “technical water” systems. Separate fresh water systems to provide purifiers, toilets and other equipment consumers with operating water. Not only to avoid contamination but to provide water of appropriate quality (demineralized) to prevent scale formation in control water parts. I have Also seen small deionized systems for SCR cooling. We even had the option to supply the laundry distribution from drillwater. Normally via a backflow preventer anyway but on DW via a swing elbow. These are simple things.
My observation is this, in this world of solutions if for whatever reason it became necessary to fresh water flush a fuel system (which seems odd on its face if you ever had to refuel a chopper) how is it possible to rely on a few valve positions to prevent that sort of contamination?
In my former part of the industry pot water hoses are uniquely color coded, stenciled, in the PM system, inspected, disinfected regularly etc. they don’t mistakenly get used to bunker jet fuel. But hey even as a victim of Murphy’s law many times over how is it possible to have this happen more than once and over years? Maybe there is a NAVSEA lurker on here that can enlighten us on carrier potable system design features.
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agree any connection to the portable water system should be positive. Removable spool piece would be my choice.
Oh, I agree it’s a major problem and should be corrected. My point is it’s a complex vessel operated in part literally by teenagers. Just don’t think we should be so incredulous when things go wrong. Or that the solution is necessarily going to be something simple and obvious.
My guess is it’s a procedural issue.
Yes I think that’s what’s missing here, it’s the lack of context to understand what’s happening.
Karl Weick used air operations on a carrier as an example of HROs so the Navy, in principle at least, is capable of managing this type problem. As far as the cause, just about anything is possible but more context would be useful.
As a former Oil King on a 1052 class Frigate back in the early 80’s I call BS on this. I conducted all refueling and ballasting evolutions at sea and in port. The potable water tanks were not connected to the ballast system. I would lay money on some disgruntled squid intentionally contaminating said tank in hopes of preventing the ship from getting underway. Karma is a MF’R. Hope he finds his payback.
The article in the OP says the tanks are interconnected but another article says it was a leak. So nothing firm. Also with a second look, it’s inert CO2 that was used to flush fuel lines of flammable liquids not water so that apparently could not have been the issue.
What about the theory of sucking up dumped fuel into the evaporator suction?
Bull. I was a nuke on the Abraham Lincoln. i was a MM who worked in MR1. We did the potable water for the ship. Both MRs had 2 DUs, distilling units. These took in seawater and turned it in to potable water through 7 steps, boiling the seawater and collecting the steam, condensing it, then doing it 6 more times. The stages were under partial vacuum to allow water to boil at less than 212 degrees. This is also where the potable water pumps were that supplied water pressure for the ship. After the water left the DU, it went through the pumps and into the ships supply lines. You could also fill the potable water tanks via a tap after it left the DUs. Calcium hypochlorite was also added to the water to help kill any bacteria, but the temp of each stage was around 185 degrees at which killed almost all bacteria. There is no way JP5 would be present in the DUs output, even if it was present in the seawater intake. The pot water tanks were located directly under the main deck, nowhere close to the bilge. If you overfilled a tank, pot water would spill all over the hallway it was under, and the DU watch was the one who had to mop it up. Anyway, each bilge was isolated from each other, the one under MR1 never left the MR. So the DU output was the main source of pot water, with the pot water tanks able to be connected to supply additional water as needed. The JP5 stuff was located three decks above the main deck, and never touched the pot water system. Ballast tanks? Are you kidding me? Aircraft carriers dont use ballast tanks, they are HUGE, with about half the ship below the waterline. Considering the total displacement of the carrier, ballast tanks would do squat. The only way JP5 could get into a pot water tank would be by running a jumper line that went through 5 decks high and about 50 yards long. Not possible. This whole line up thing is totally false. Now, you could stop the steam supply to the DU and pump raw seawater into the system, but not by any accident. No, something else was going on, trust me.
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Thanks for that information. This story below tells a different story (lack of jet fuel aspect). This story would send me right into storage tanks for inspect and clean and then superchlorination or other disinfection process. Tanks and system.
I was a nuke on TRUMAN, but never qualified EOOW & not part of M-Div, so was always sketchy on pot water knowledge. I remembered more or less what you what said. Seawater & JP-5 maybe, with a bunch of idiots doing it on purpose, but I couldn’t recall any possible cross connect with JP5 & pot water. Heck, it took darn near an act of Congress to get a quick fill connection from the pot water system to chill water for refill purposes on new designs. Any time it was proposed the answer was ‘nope, can’t connect to pot water, period.’
Why? Why would anyone do that especially since the idiots have to drink/bathe/brush their teeth in that same water? I mean, it’s not like sailors get OT for making extra work for themselves.
Sailors do a lot of stupid things, sometimes just to see if they can. Bored nukes can be a dangerous lot.
Infiltrators, saboteurs, fifth columnists.