Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller planes to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, 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 restricted 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 thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods.

Jatropha is a genus of roughly 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 finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, 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 and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical consultants for the project.

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

One actually encouraging development has actually been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive 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 certainly if some people ended up starving just to please another person’s green credentials.