1 Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

samuellavater5 edited this page 5 months ago

It's bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

Jatropha is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic experts for the task.

The most current airline to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers consequently avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed blessing indeed if some people ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green credentials.