Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop planes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to various kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods items.

Jatropha is a genus of roughly 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 insects, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical experts for the task.

The newest airline to begin exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% made from cooking oil. This mix, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging development has been the relocation far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thereby avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined true blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to please another person’s green credentials.