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 might begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

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

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation leader, 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 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 items.

Jatropha is a genus of approximately 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 finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic specialists for the task.

The most recent airline to with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has 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 damaging emissions by 10%.

One really motivating advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long back, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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