About Us

Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller planes to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

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

Jatropha is a genus of approximately 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 very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research study and advancement 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 most recent airline company to start try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One really motivating advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thus preventing a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and 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 focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving simply to satisfy someone else’s green qualifications.