Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to various kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started 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 including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods items.

jatropha curcas is a genus of around 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 very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

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

The most recent airline to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights using a blend 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 advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby avoiding a price spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

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