Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

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

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover practical options to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel pioneer, 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 thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods items.

Jatropha is a genus of around 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 best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

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

The current airline to begin explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging advancement has been the move away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thus preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined true blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving simply to please somebody else’s green credentials.