Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
It's bad enough for some prop planes to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at commercial airplane 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 alternatives to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to different kinds of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation 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 utilized various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods.
Jatropha is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, 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 carry out research study and advancement into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as for the task.
The most recent airline to begin exploring with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed 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 truly encouraging development has been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers consequently preventing a rate spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing certainly if some people wound up starving just to satisfy another person's green qualifications.