Airlines Concentrate 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 could start having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable options to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to various kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly 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 thought about 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 family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic specialists for the job.
The current airline company to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.
One actually motivating advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars 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 curcas and algae. It would be a combined true blessing certainly if some people wound up starving simply to please somebody else's green credentials.