Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to come down to different types of biofuel.

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

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 cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects 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 aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to perform research and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical specialists for the job.

The most recent airline company to begin try out is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging advancement has been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thus avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended true blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else’s green credentials.