It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods items.
Jatropha is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha jatropha curcas), from the family 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 bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to carry out research study and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic specialists for the task.
The latest airline company to start try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out 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 truly motivating advancement has been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thereby avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing indeed if some people wound up starving just to please another person's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Genia McEncroe edited this page 2 weeks ago