Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics could start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

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

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, 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 utilized different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred 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 function as strategic specialists for the project.

The most recent airline to begin exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed 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 damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in vehicles 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 mixed true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to please somebody else’s green qualifications.