1 Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

Troy Kunkel edited this page 1 week ago

It's bad enough for some prop planes to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable options to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly 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 thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods items.

Jatropha is a genus of around 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 best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research study and advancement into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical consultants for the task.

The current airline company to begin experimenting with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights using 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 actually encouraging development has actually been the move away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing indeed if some people ended up starving simply to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.