In tests on landing craft utilities, Navy revs up a fuel of future

VIRGINIA BEACH

Navy landing craft utilities are some of the fleet's most dependable workhorses. Most are 40 years old, but their massive diesel engines are still capable of hauling 180 tons of equipment from ship to shore.

LCU-1663 is no different. One of 16 LCUs assigned to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, it spent three months this year deployed to Central and South America. Last year, it responded to the Haiti earthquake.

This week, with a gaggle of engineers aboard, the 135-foot-long vessel did something new: It went to sea with a fuel other than diesel in one of its two tanks.

The landing craft is taking part in the latest test of the Navy's effort to power its vessels and aircraft with a blend of biofuel and fossil fuel. During a four-hour test run, the boat operated with a 50-50 blend of petroleum and a biofuel derived from algae.

Chief Petty Officer Bernard Hall, the man in charge of the boat and its 12-person crew, said they put the craft through a workout in the Chesapeake Bay. They ran the engines at different speeds in 10-minute increments, up to full power. Engineers from Naval Sea Systems Command monitored sensors and gauges that measured torque, temperatures and RPM.

"The engines didn't skip a beat between the two fuels," said Chief Warrant Officer Eric Jones, waterfront maintenance officer for Assault Craft Unit 2.

He held up two glass jars of the liquids that make up the blend: One, the color of dark iced tea, was F-76, the military's marine petroleum. The other, clearer and lighter, was biofuel developed by Solazyme.

The biofuel isn't cheap. Right now, it's probably 10 times more expensive than diesel. But the Navy hopes the price will drop as demand for synthetic fuel rises. The secretary of the Navy announced in 2009 that he wanted the service to use 50 percent less petroleum by 2020.

Richard Leung, a Navy fuels specialist, said Thursday that biofuels must be "drop-in" replacements that work without needing to modify engines.

"Users shouldn't know if they're getting petroleum or biofuel," he said.

Hall and Jones said they would've been able to tell something was different during the test Tuesday even if they hadn't known the boat was operating on biofuel. But the difference was an improvement: less exhaust, especially when the engines were working at full power.

"It burned a lot cleaner, but it didn't operate any differently," Jones said of LCU-1663.

Hall thinks that's good news: "It could be very beneficial to the environment as a whole."

Next week, Hall and his crew will put their craft to the test again, this time burning only petroleum. Engineers will compare the results with this week's test.

It probably will be a long time until the LCUs at Little Creek use biofuel on a daily basis. The craft deploy - and get their fuel - from amphibious ships, which haven't yet tested the biofuel.

But this is a good start, said Cmdr. Angela Morales, the commander of Assault Craft Unit 2. "I think we're well down the road to becoming a green fleet. It's a great initiative."

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com