Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might start having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.


With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to various kinds of biofuel.


Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel 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 utilized different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods.


Jatropha is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.


In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, 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 making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical specialists for the task.


The latest airline company to start explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.


One truly motivating development has been the relocation away from biofuels which compete head on with food customers thus avoiding a price spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.


Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy another person's green credentials.