It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at industrial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover practical alternatives to traditional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
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 jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates 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 aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to carry out research and development into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic experts for the project.
The current airline to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has 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 hazardous emissions by 10%.
One truly encouraging development has been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thus avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long back, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing undoubtedly if some ended up starving simply to satisfy somebody else's green credentials.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
laurindasolber edited this page 2025-01-12 02:50:41 +08:00