Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible options to traditional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different types of biofuel.

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

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant 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 moved to carry out research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic consultants for the job.

The newest airline company to begin explore brand-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 mix, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with therefore preventing a cost spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing certainly if some people ended up starving simply to please another person’s green qualifications.