1 Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

Maisie Ligertwood edited this page 7 days ago

It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly 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 curcas which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods items.

jatropha curcas 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 very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Foundation transferred to carry out research and advancement into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic consultants for the task.

The most recent airline to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using a mix 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 motivating advancement has been the relocation away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers therefore avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing undoubtedly if some people ended up starving simply to please somebody else's green qualifications.