Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to conventional kerosene and these so far seem to come down to various kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods.

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 pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the finest prospects 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 aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and advancement into making use of 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 company to start try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out 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 really motivating development has actually been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thus avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined true blessing indeed if some people ended up starving simply to please somebody else’s green qualifications.