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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It's bad enough for some prop planes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics could start having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

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

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and pests, 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 relocated to perform research study and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical consultants for the job.

The most current airline company to start exploring with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using 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 actually motivating advancement has been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers therefore preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers corn to fuel processing.

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