It's bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable options to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the very first trials of were initiated by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly 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 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 mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell 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 moved to perform research and advancement into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical experts for the project.
The latest airline company to begin try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights using a blend 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 advancement has been the relocation away from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended true blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to please somebody else's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
bessdaves73165 edited this page 2025-01-12 04:49:24 +08:00