Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

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

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to conventional kerosene and these so far seem to come down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different 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 approximately 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 finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research and advancement into the usage 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 exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating advancement has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thus preventing a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

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