It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to various types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, 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 restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell 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 moved to perform research and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical experts for the project.
The current airline to begin exploring with 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 mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thus preventing a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize rates 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 combined blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving just to please somebody else's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Jonathon Archie edited this page 3 months ago