It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at industrial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to traditional kerosene and these up until now appear to come down to different types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation 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 used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha 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 finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to carry out 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 function as tactical specialists for the project.
The latest airline to start explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has 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 hazardous emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging advancement has actually been the move away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thereby preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green credentials.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Ericka Provost edited this page 2025-01-12 06:03:46 +01:00