Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics might start having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to come down to numerous types of biofuel.

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

Jatropha is a genus of approximately 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 best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and advancement into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical consultants for the task.

The most recent airline to begin try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a cost spiral. Not so long back, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize prices 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 blended true blessing indeed if some people wound up starving simply to satisfy somebody else’s green credentials.