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AN 81st ENTRY PRODUCT FOR AVIATION
On the 23rd August 2005 CTT Systems was awarded a $250 million contract
over 20 years and designated' Original Equipment Supplier of the Zonal
Drying System' for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
A saturated gas will always dissipate to an unsaturated gas. This is
the total science behind the invention, which is unique in the fact that
it prevents condensation in the aircraft whilst in operation and, as you
know, civil airlines aircraft are operative about 20hrs. per day or more.
The achievements of the great Frank Whittle were drummed into our heads.
The jet engine created lots of good things but also a lot of problems,
one being condensation in high flying aircraft. On Atlantic flights, for
example, about 30ltrs of water per hour is produced by the passengers!
Where does it go?
Most of it condenses into the insulation next to the outer skin. I have
seen sacks of bulging insulation, and at times have tapped off 20ltrs
from one place, but usually its just a block of ice, the temperature goes
down to -30degrees C just inside the outer skin.
All this water (sometimes known as rain in the plane) causes severe corrosion
among other problems. Perhaps you remember when the complete top of the
fuselage blew off a B737 in Hawaii in 1988? Other problems are wet arc
tracking, short circuits, fungus and mould in the insulation and believe
it or not, between 200 to700 kilos of extra weight, usually in the form
of wet soggy insulation blankets. It takes about 6 man-hours to replace
them with dry ones.
I got caught up in this problem in 1985 when the rudder limiter system
on an aircraft I was responsible for froze up in flight. Two colleges
and myself got the idea how to break this problem. We designed a desiccant
wheel dehumidifier that weighed only 5kg, which blew dry air into the
intermediate zone between the cabin liner and the outer skin. The aircraft
manufacturer in question would not accept our solution, so we started
our own company …. CTT SYSTEMS.
We filled in all the appropriate application forms and, with marketing
expertise supplied by my wife Annette; it took 6 weeks to compile the
business plan. Believe it or not the Swedish Industrial Development Fund
financed us with the Swedish equivalent of £1,000,000 over a period
of 4 years. The company really got going with this financing, and then,
with the system patent approved, the CAA in Sweden gave production approval
and certified the system. Flight tests were carried out on a B767-300
doing Atlantic flights and lo and behold it worked! We dried out the insulation
in 3 months and removed 250kilos of water. Another airline asked for a
test on their B 767 s. After numerous and tiresome problems with Boeing
and the aviation authorities the system was installed and certified. It
worked, and our little company really took off.
It was reputed that Boeing had spent 3 years and $2M trying to solve the
condensation problem for this airline. We fixed it on 6 aircraft in 6
months for a fraction of that cost. We also had to invent a method for
measuring the amount of water without removing the insulation from the
aircraft, and a trend monitoring to show the drying progress.
A tragic event, if you remember, was the Swiss Air Flt 111, an MD11 that
went down outside Labrador. A few months after the crash analysis our
system was installed in their complete MD11 fleet, 18 of them.
A major challenge for the company was when NASA asked for a system able
to prevent condensation at -65 degrees C on a telescope mirror installed
in a B747, the Sofia project, CTT SYSTEMS succeeded.
In 1996 CTT Systems was among the finalists for the Flight International
aviation awards.
In 2000 CTT Systems won the Flight International aviation award for engineering.
If you are interested in more, fuller, details have a look at the website
below. There you can find all the technical details and a very impressive
customer register. The system is now a recommended option with the 3 major
manufacturers Airbus, Boeing and Bombardier.
The first British airline to use the Zonal drying system is Air 2000,
the second Cook Airlines. CTT equipment has also been chosen as basic
equipment for the AIRBUS 380.
CTT SYSTEMS went public in 1997 and I retired. Can you imagine how it
felt when Boeing chose the Zonal Drying System for the 787?
I GOT IT RIGHT IN 1988!
Website http://www.ctt.se
Any questions e-mail thomas.white#telia.com
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