Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics could begin having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly 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 poor for growing mainstream .

Jatropha is a genus of roughly 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 best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and insects, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical experts for the project.

The most recent airline company to begin exploring with brand-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 mix, it is claimed, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging advancement has been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thus preventing a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize prices 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 combined blessing indeed if some individuals wound up starving just to please somebody else’s green qualifications.