Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very 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 usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved 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 serve as strategic experts for the project.

The most recent airline company to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thereby avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some people wound up starving simply to satisfy someone else’s green credentials.