It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics could start having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to traditional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to various kinds of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods.
Jatropha is a genus of approximately 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 very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts 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 mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.
One really motivating advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers therefore avoiding a price spiral. Not so long back, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize rates 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 blended true blessing certainly if some people wound up starving simply to please someone else's green credentials.
