It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, 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 minimal usage 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 curcas which can grow in soil thought about too bad 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 candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic consultants for the job.
The most recent airline company to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One actually motivating development has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers therefore preventing a price spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle 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 just to satisfy somebody else's green credentials.
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Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Lurlene Hause edited this page 3 months ago