Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

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

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover practical options to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to different types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began 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 consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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 Jatropha curcas as one of the finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to perform research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical specialists for the project.

The current airline company to begin explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights using a blend of 80 % fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating development has actually been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers consequently preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some individuals wound up starving just to please someone else’s green qualifications.