Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
It’s bad enough for some prop planes to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, 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 restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
Jatropha is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the best prospects 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 Support Foundation moved to perform research study and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic experts for the task.
The current airline to begin experimenting with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.
One truly motivating advancement has actually been the move away from biofuels which compete head on with food customers thus preventing a cost spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed blessing certainly if some people wound up starving just to please another person’s green credentials.