Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to different types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose began 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 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 around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and insects, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to carry out research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the project.
The current airline company to begin exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging advancement has been the relocation away from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use 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 combined blessing indeed if some people ended up starving just to please somebody else's green credentials.