It's bad enough for some propeller planes to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at industrial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible options to standard kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to various types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, 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 utilized various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods items.
jatropha curcas 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 mentioned Jatropha 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 relocated to perform research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic specialists for the task.
The current airline to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One truly motivating development has been the move away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers therefore preventing a price spiral. Not so long back, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, companies and drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to please somebody else's green credentials.
1
Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Quincy Cross edited this page 2025-01-12 05:17:34 +08:00