1 Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

Ann Gosling edited this page 6 months ago

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

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New who each used various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical experts for the project.

The current airline company to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a combined blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving just to satisfy another person's green credentials.