Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics could start having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to conventional kerosene and these so far seem to come down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha 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 household Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the best 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 aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support to carry out research and advancement into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic consultants for the job.

The current airline to begin try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating development has been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thus avoiding a price spiral. Not so long back, a rise in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to please somebody else’s green credentials.