Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop planes to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might begin 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 costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find practical options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation 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 Zealand who each utilized various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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 cited Jatropha curcas as one of the best prospects 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 aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform 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 function as tactical experts for the task.

The most current airline company to start explore brand-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 mixture, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging development has actually been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers consequently avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long back, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered 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 usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving just to please another person’s green credentials.