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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods.

Jatropha is a genus of roughly 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 candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to carry out research study and advancement into making use of 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 begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging development has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thus avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle drivers will usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing undoubtedly if some people wound up starving just to please somebody else’s green credentials.