Aviation Fuel

SkepticJ

Number of weeks back I was reading in Wikipedia on plot holes in movies, one of the mentioned plot holes is in an awful movie I'm going to do my best to avoid: Battlefield Earth. But I digress. The plot hole, among others, is aviation fuel spoils after a few years, so it would be impossible to fuel aircraft on some stored for 1,000.

My question is why does it spoil? Is it the kerosene that goes bad, or something else? If the kerosene, why does it go bad? Just a hydrocarbon, unless it's bombarded by UV light, I don't see why it should ever go bad. Nothing really eats it, yet, except perhaps some kind of GM bacterium.

sas3

Here is a link that explains what happens to Gasoline I would think the same process happens to kerosene just at a slower rate.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/060825.html

SkepticJ

Hmmm, that makes sense. Plus car gas would decay faster than kerosene since oxidizers are mixed into gas to make it burn better. Not sure if kerosene-based aviation fuel has this done as well--I've found no mention of it.