It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to numerous kinds 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 limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods.
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 cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very 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 aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and advancement into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic experts for the project.
The current airline company to start exploring with brand-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 mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One really encouraging development has actually been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a price spiral. Not so long back, a rise 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, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to please somebody else's green qualifications.
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Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Verona Demarco edited this page 2025-01-13 17:48:08 +00:00