Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

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

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods items.

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 cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

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

The current airline company to start try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted 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 harmful emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers therefore avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing indeed if some people ended up starving simply to please another person’s green credentials.