It's bad enough for some to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics could begin having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find practical alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to numerous kinds of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel 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 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 foods items.
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 jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell 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 and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic consultants for the job.
The latest airline to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted 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 harmful emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging advancement has actually been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers therefore preventing a cost spiral. Not so long back, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to please somebody else's green credentials.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Ross Browning edited this page 16 hours ago