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Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to come down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage 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 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 finest 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 aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to bring out research study and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic specialists for the task.

The latest to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating advancement has been the relocation away from biofuels which complete head on with food customers consequently avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long back, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some people wound up starving simply to please someone else’s green credentials.