Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

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

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to with restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred 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 serve as strategic specialists for the job.

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

One truly encouraging development has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thereby avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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