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 cynics might begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to traditional kerosene and these up until now appear to come down to various kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

Jatropha is a genus of approximately 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 bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

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

The current airline to start try out 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 mixture, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging development has been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thus preventing a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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