If the JP-5 and water are mixed in the ballast system, does that mean that it is also discharged overboard?
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At least some folks with actual knowledge of the systems in question showed up for this post.
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Heres an explanation from a former carrier engineering officer:
To inspect them, these tanks need to be drained of fuel and then flushed out with fresh water from the ship’s potable water system so there’s no fuel residue inside the tanks and engineers can safely review them. In doing this, the crew has to physically connect the ship’s potable water system to its fuel oil system through piping.
“You don’t want that to be something that’s normally connected, to avoid the problem that we’re talking about,” Clark said in a recent interview.
Aligning the potable water system and the fuel system involves opening valves that are normally locked shut in order to allow the two systems to connect. The fuel system is supposed to be depressurized, and the potable system should be pressurized. This way, when the valves open, water gets pushed into the fuel tank instead of the other way around.
That explanation, while logical, would still have been entirely preventable with the aforementioned check valves or back flow preventers. Still sounds like a shit design, a known problem, and a known solution.
I don’t think you’re going to like the answer to that question…
Why would someone contaminate the water supply? I was on a MSC tanker once and hadn’t been in port in a while, and water consumption was suddenly astronomically high, to the point where we shut off clothes washers and almost went Port/Stbd with showers. We suspected someone was leaving taps running to intentionally run us out of water in hopes it would force a port stop. Sailors do dumb stuff.
i agree there is not sufficient info. typical of a shore based news release.
all in all I just don’t see this contamination as something that’d be easy to happen.
Now you know.
Probably.
really? the PW tank vent/overflow co-joins the gd sewage vent line? obviously the ‘‘graduate’’ hasn’t seen a sewage vent line… he should get the cabin downwind of the vent for a couple seasons!
I understood it to mean the pot water tank vent pipe passed up through a bilge space, as tank vents do, and there was some corrosion or pin hole leaks in the vent pipe allowing leakage of the bilge water into the vent pipe. That was my interpretation, could be wrong.
The OP is about jet fuel in the potable water on the Nimitz, the article that hornblower posted is about waste water aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln
i wondered about this after i wrote it as overflow would head back to the blackwater tanks, but then, i always saw pw flow onto the deck (keeps salt down!) still, they don’t run pw thru a fuel tank so why the overflow? besides, they use so much monel on govt. ships you’d think corrosion wound’t be much of a issue!
I think you’re closing in on this bs.
Overflow lines for the potw tanks were all on the main deck level. The pipes came up, made a U turn, and ended with a drain under them that exited into the waste system. They were there to catch sloshing in the tanks. If you overflowed a tank while fílling, a ton of water came out that had to be mopped up. No way any kind of contamination could enter that way. The air vent lines that are mentioned, I have no idea about. They were not included in the system drawings. See, this is one of those crossover systems between the nuke MM’s and the regular MM’s. Because of that, odds are no one actually looked after the tanks until something went wrong, as in this case. The bilge in the ship is not continous. The reactor room bilge is walled off from the machinery room bilge, and the MM bilge is walled off on the other end. Bilges were kept blown empty as much as possible. The MM bilge contained oil and water. Nothing down there for e cloi to be present. The bilge was a good 40 feet below the potw tanks anyway. Doesnt make sense to route an air line that way, nor for bilge water to work its way 40 feet up into a tank. This explaination is fishy.
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I do not remember well now but most all over the side exits had check valves in them, I do remember a few ships where pw overflow went across the deck but it wasn’t a deal but you’re right in that pw didn’t get above main deck. BUT, if pw has a checkvalve in it then in theory you need a vent or you’ll vacumize the tank and you can’t vent it via the pw input off the evaps?
and i don’t reall the 1’’ or so overflow on main deck having any check valve tho pw would hardly need any attention
kind of unrelated but i remember a ship where bilge water was always increasing … (ok several) but this incident involved a deck drain that went straight down into the damn bilge! can you imagine? … never mind the fuel manifold with the mis-labled tanks … gawd!
Better tell MIT and the navy before they do something stupid that might contaminate potable water.
Oops, too late.
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This is kinda misleading, these arent ballast tanks that are filled and drained and filled again as needed, they are talking about tanks filled once and thats it. But those tanks will only have a fill line, and not be connected to jp5 lines at all. So if you are just trying to prove me wrong, i concede a half point.
Not trying to prove anything other than the Nimitz class boats have a ballast system that is emptied and filled as required to reduce list. It is called the List Control System or LCS.
Given this bit of additional news Jet Fuel Water Was Just the Start; USS Abraham Lincoln Has E. Coli apparently there may be some means of cross communication among various piping systems on that class of ships.
There seems to be a lot of missing information in this fuel/water contamination story. I would think any competent epidemiologist would be able to quickly determine the time and place where the contamination was first discovered or reported and trace it back to a source. Was it found in every single potable water dispenser throughout the ship? What tank(s) were in service at the time it was first noted? Were all tanks contaminated? Were there JP5 or potable water loading or discharge operations underway? Was the LCS in operation? Pumping from where to where? I am obviously not an epidemiologist but even I can think of many questions, the answers to which might lead to a source of contamination.
This is actually the most likely scenario.
Fuel and water systems are not just seperated bu valves or spectacle flanges, they are completely independant pipe systems. A fuel hose was connected to a water intake.
You cant screw up the line up with valves alone, this is basic shit, i dont know why anyone here is confused about it. Also, why even bring ballast into this? Again potable water is independant.
KISS, somebody screwed up and pumped fuel into the system. The navy is using fancy wordplay, because thats what they do.
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You are assuming the E Coli is from the ship. It could have been in the water already if they filled up from a bad source.
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All the times I ever had to fix fuel in the water or water in the fuel it was human error with the wrong hose in the wrong tank.
I was kinda hoping that once you got to the size of a carrier, maybe the fill fittings had specific flanges that did not allow the wrong hose to go on the wrong tank, but I could be wrong.
They don’t use garden hoses or gas station fuel nozzles.
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I figured as much, unless they wanted to spend 2 or 3 weeks filling up. What I have no idea about is whether whatever official Navy hose fitting they do use is the same for fuel and water???