Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics could begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

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

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

jatropha curcas 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 cited Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and insects, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research study and advancement into making use 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 most recent airline to start experimenting with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers therefore preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing undoubtedly if some people wound up starving just to satisfy somebody else’s green credentials.