Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller planes to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics might begin having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable options to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to various kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly 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 considered too bad for growing mainstream foods.

Jatropha is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, 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 perform research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical experts for the project.

The latest airline company to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging advancement has been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers consequently avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies 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 just to satisfy somebody else’s green qualifications.