Mailing List lml@lancaironline.net Message #15048
From: Gary Casey <glcasey@adelphia.net>
Sender: Marvin Kaye <marv@lancaironline.net>
Subject: water in the crankcase
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 19:58:44 -0400
To: <lml>
<<I have a solution.

Get rid of the water.

How?  Easy.  Put on a turbocharger.  Then every flight,  the oil temperature
will go to about 200 to 215F for a few minutes at the top of the climb and
then all the water in the oil will be gone out the breather!>>

Well, you can certainly get rid of most of the water from the oil be running
the oil temperature above 200F or so.  It doesn't really take temperatures
above 212, partly because of altitude and partly because the water will
evaporate fairly rapidly below 212.  But, remember that the crankcase has
only combustion product in it, so it is essentially saturated with water
vapor anyway.  One solution is to add a positive crankcase ventilation (PCV)
the same as cars have had for eons.  This won't function any differently in
flight, but will pull fresh air into the crankcase at idle.  This will purge
most of the water vapor from the crankcase before shutdown.  It will also
increase the oxygen concentration - a bad thing.  I don't know if anyone has
used a PCV system on an aircraft or not.

Gary Casey
ES project


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