1 Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

Daryl Campbell edited this page 3 days ago

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

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

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use 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 which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods items.

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and advancement into making 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 most current airline company to start try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted 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 hazardous emissions by 10%.

One actually motivating advancement has been the move away from biofuels which compete head on with food customers therefore avoiding a price spiral. Not so long back, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks caused 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 intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended true blessing indeed if some people ended up starving simply to please somebody else's green qualifications.