Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

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

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to come down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted 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 consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods items.

Jatropha is a genus of roughly 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 containing 27-40% oil.

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

The current airline company to start try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging advancement has been the relocation far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers therefore preventing a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing indeed if some people ended up starving simply to please somebody else’s green credentials.