It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible options to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to come down to different types of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the first trials of were initiated by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods.
jatropha curcas is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the 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 aeronautical significant 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 function as strategic specialists for the task.
The newest airline to begin exploring with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One actually motivating development has actually been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thus preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered 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 non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving simply to please somebody else's green credentials.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Darrell Nies edited this page 2025-01-12 05:48:47 +00:00