It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find practical options to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, 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 regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered 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 best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought 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 moved to bring out research study and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical specialists for the task.
The latest airline to start try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One truly encouraging advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers thus avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing indeed if some people wound up starving just to please someone else's green credentials.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Larue Burfitt edited this page 2025-01-11 22:04:53 +00:00