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Airlines Concentrate 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 begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible options to standard kerosene and these so far appear to come 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 started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage 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 thought about too poor 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 pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for production. It is resistant to drought and pests, 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 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 job.

The most recent airline to begin explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One really motivating development has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which compete head on with food customers therefore avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

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