Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

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

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to conventional kerosene and these so far seem to come down to various types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of regular 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 family Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the best for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the job.

The current airline company to begin try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thus avoiding a price spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive 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 blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving simply to satisfy someone else’s green credentials.