Petroleum Quality Information System (PQIS): Requirements and Recommended Design

摘要

DoD uses about 200 million barrels of petroleum fuels a year, at annual cost of more than $6 billion. To make sure the various fuels are suitable for their intended uses, standards of quality have been established. But data about quality are not always current or in a form that lends itself readily to analysis. We find that a suitable DoD-wide system for collecting and analyzing data about fuel quality is possible. Much of the work would be done by computers now used by the Military Departments and Defense Fuel Supply Center (DFSC) for bulk fuels purchased and kept in dormant storage. These are most subject to degradation and contamination by water and impurities. The system would be expanded to include quality control data for all bulk petroleum purchases. We also recommend collecting data using decentralized microcomputers; transferring data to a DFSC minicomputer for storage, retrieval, and report generation; and moving data to a computer mainframe when statistical analysis is needed. The task of entering data should be delegated to the petroleum quality organizations of the various Departments, by product type: JP4 for the Air Force, JP5 and F76 for the Navy, and ground fuels for the Army.