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Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
It’s bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods.
Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic experts for the task.
The current airline to start explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.
One truly encouraging development has been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers consequently avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving simply to please another person’s green qualifications.