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Airlines Focus 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 commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to conventional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted 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 around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research relocated to perform research and development into using 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 company to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted 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 hazardous emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging development has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a cost spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed blessing indeed if some people ended up starving simply to please someone else's green credentials.