It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to traditional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to various types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted 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.
Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical experts for the job.
The current airline company to begin exploring with brand-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 move far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a rate spiral. Not so long back, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some people wound up starving just to please someone else's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Phil Dunrossil edited this page 2025-01-11 13:25:52 +00:00