It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might begin having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and legislation, the race is on to discover practical options to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered 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 mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to perform research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical specialists for the job.
The most current airline company to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed 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 truly encouraging advancement has been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers therefore avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving simply to please another person's green credentials.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Ezequiel Fikes edited this page 2025-01-12 03:25:53 +00:00