Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

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

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far appear to come down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods.

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 mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought 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 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 specialists for the job.

The current airline to begin 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 hazardous emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging development has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

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