It's bad enough for some propeller planes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to conventional kerosene and these so far seem to come down to numerous types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods.
Jatropha is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research and advancement into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical specialists for the task.
The latest airline to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging advancement has been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers thus preventing a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving just to please another person's green .
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Aaron Fulcher edited this page 5 days ago