Miniature fittings enhance airline beverage service

Designers increasingly rely on pneumatics for clean, fast, reliable, and economical automation systems. A new beverage-dispensing cart eliminates the need for bottles and cans. Beverage service aboard commercial aircraft has changed little since the 1950s. Flight attendants wheel a mobile service cart filled with metal cans to each passenger. With an increasing focus on cost and weight reductions, this traditional method will soon be replaced with a new system from Sterling Beverage Systems, Newnan, Ga. Sterling has designed and received FAA certification for a beverage-dispensing cart that promises dramatic cost savings for the airline industry. The system works similar to the postmixed dispensing systems used for many years at high-volume soft drink vendors such as McDonald's and Burger King. The cart dispenses up to 14 carbonated and noncarbonated beverages, including soda, juice, tea, and water. It's powered by a cylinder of CO gas similar to those used to supply oxygen in the event of cabin decompression. The cart carries soda syrup in recyclable plastic bottles. Chilling carbonated water and syrup below 40?F before pouring over ice enhances carbonation. Beverage-dispensing heads at both ends of the cart allow two flight attendants to use the cart at the same time. Fully loaded the cart weighs approximately 210 lb. Potential cost savings are substantial. A major U.S. airline currently uses more than 50,000,000 beverage cans per year and each can is handled many times before being discarded. A typical 12 oz soda can contains 10 oz of water. The Sterling system eliminates the need to carry this extra weight as water is taken, as needed, from the aircraft water supply. The system is estimated to reduce the nonproductive fleetwide aircraft load by 80,000 lb/day which, in turn, reduces fuel consumption. Further cost savings are realized because syrup costs less than cans. Sterling also estimates