Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods.

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 finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, 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 carry out research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical consultants for the project.

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

One actually encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation far from which complete head on with food consumers thus preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge 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, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some people wound up starving simply to please someone else’s green qualifications.