It's bad enough for some prop planes to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to find practical alternatives to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to various kinds 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 use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
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 pointed out Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred 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 serve as strategic consultants for the job.
The most recent airline to begin experimenting with brand-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 mix, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One actually motivating advancement has been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a rate spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing certainly if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.
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Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
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