Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller planes to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable options to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to come down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods.

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 cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to carry out research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical consultants for the task.

The current airline company to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut harmful by 10%.

One actually motivating advancement has been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thereby avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing undoubtedly if some people ended up starving simply to satisfy someone else’s green credentials.