Grounding Plastic Gas Fills

[Reel Poor]

Has any body seen this?<br /><br />Plastic Fuel Fill Grounding<br /><br />Recent events have caused the boating industry to examine the policy regarding the bonding of plastic body fuel fills with metallic caps and retaining chains. Existing USCG & ABYC policy states that the bonding of these components is voluntary. A study by IMANNA Laboratories has shown that connecting the metallic retaining chain and cap of a plastic body fuel fill assembly to a boats bonding system may result in electrostatic discharge from a land-based fuel pump nozzle to the metallic components of the assembly when the boat is not in the water. This condition does not exist when the boat is in the water due to the equalizations of the ground potentials between the fuel pump nozzle and the boat’s bonding system. <br /><br />It is recommended by ABYC and the USCG that new installations of this type of fuel fill assembly DO NOT INCLUDE any attachment to the boats bonding system. The U.S. Coast Guard and ABYC still require that METALLIC body fuel fills be bonded. There have been no reported explosions or fires resulting from this phenomenon. Therefore no substantial risk of personal injury to the public exists, and formal defect notification (recall) by boat and/or equipment manufacturers is not required by the Coast Guard in this case. The ABYC Project Technical Committee has included this topic in the soon to be published H-24 Gasoline Fuel Systems on Boats that eliminates the bonding connection for plastic body fuel fills with metallic caps and retaining chains.<br /><br />For further information contact:<br /><br />John Adey, ABYC (410) 956-1050 ex, 29 jadey@abycinc.org<br /><br />Richard Blackman (202) 267-6810 rblackman@comdt.uscg.mil

 

[Texasmark]

Re: Grounding Plastic Gas Fills

Well, I'm going to say that the boat is grounded thru the lower unit (back to battery negative which should be the ref point for all boat wiring). Lower unit is in the water and hence you have your equalization of charges. Doesn't matter what the boat's material is; ground is via the engine.<br /><br />On the trailer it is isolated from the ground via the rubber tires and also the "rig" could have developed static electricity from rolling down the road. The tire isolation helps it to hold the charge and when you touch the fuel (grounded at the supply) spigot to it you get the discharge.<br /><br />On my boat I have the grounded filler and hose, but the tank is made of fiberglas and the fuel is in the tank. Can't ground that very well and being a semiconductor it could develop a static charge.<br /><br />So the real answer would be a metallic fuel system with a single point grounding post on the boat to which you attach a ground lead from the filling station prior to removing the fuel filler cap or the nozzle from it's holder on the pump. <br /><br />That would stop any sparks. Ha! But who's going to do that......and out of the millions of fill ups of boats and cars, when is the last time you saw or heard of a fire from a spark at fill up time? Very few.<br /><br />Mark