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1 Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible options to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine 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 is a genus of roughly 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 finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial 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 airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic specialists for the project.

The current airline to begin try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging advancement has been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thus preventing a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing undoubtedly if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy another person's green qualifications.