Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

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

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to different types of biofuel.

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

Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household 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 bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical consultants for the task.

The most current airline company to begin experimenting with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed 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 damaging emissions by 10%.

One really motivating development has been the relocation far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing undoubtedly if some individuals ended up starving simply to please someone else’s green qualifications.