Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable options to traditional kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to different types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too bad 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 mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the very 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 Foundation transferred to perform research study and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic consultants for the task.

The most recent 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 mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging advancement has been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in usage of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as and algae. It would be a mixed blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else’s green credentials.