Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to and these up until now seem to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

jatropha curcas 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 mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and advancement into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic experts for the task.

The newest airline to begin try out 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 harmful emissions by 10%.

One really motivating development has been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby avoiding a rate 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 intake on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some individuals wound up starving just to satisfy another person’s green qualifications.