Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

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

Not remarkably, the 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 use in 2008. This was quickly 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 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 pointed out as one of the finest prospects 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 aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to carry out research and advancement into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic consultants for the task.

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

One truly motivating advancement has been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thereby avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in use of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing certainly if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else’s green credentials.