Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller planes to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used 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.

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 very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to bring out research study and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical consultants for the project.

The current airline company to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using 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 encouraging development has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

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