It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different types of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized 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 is a genus of around 175 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 very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and insects, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to bring out research and advancement into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic specialists for the project.
The newest airline company to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.
One really encouraging advancement has been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers consequently avoiding a price spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed blessing indeed if some people ended up starving simply to please another person's green qualifications.
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Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Grazyna Everhart edited this page 4 months ago