Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller planes 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 melted algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible options to conventional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to various kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use 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 which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support to carry out research study and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic experts for the project.

The latest airline company to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging advancement has been the relocation away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a rate spiral. Not so long back, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing undoubtedly if some people wound up starving simply to satisfy somebody else’s green qualifications.