It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
Jatropha is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha 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 bugs, 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 bring out research study and development into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical specialists for the job.
The most recent airline to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One truly encouraging development has been the relocation away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers therefore avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to .
Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing indeed if some people ended up starving just to please another person's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
anyaboyd197643 edited this page 2025-01-11 23:25:03 +08:00