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Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop planes to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to find practical options to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to come down to different types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha 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 curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic specialists for the project.

The latest airline company to begin explore new fuels is the Group which has actually carried out 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 damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thereby avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars 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 usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else’s green credentials.