Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller planes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to come down to different types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to carry out research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical experts for the task.

The current airline to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One really motivating development has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers therefore preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to please another person’s green qualifications.