Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
It’s bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at industrial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to standard kerosene and these so far seem to come down to numerous types of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the 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 use 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 thought about too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
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 pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the finest candidates 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 aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical consultants for the task.
The current airline to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out 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 harmful emissions by 10%.
One really motivating development has been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thus preventing a cost spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in use of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, companies and motorists will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing undoubtedly if some people ended up starving simply to satisfy someone else’s green qualifications.
