It's bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to standard kerosene and these so far appear to come down to various kinds of biofuel.
Not remarkably, 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 restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods items.
jatropha curcas 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 mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research and advancement into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the task.
The current airline to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging advancement has been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers consequently avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing certainly if some people wound 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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