It's bad enough for some prop planes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover practical alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to different kinds of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation 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 utilized various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods items.
jatropha curcas 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 cited Jatropha curcas as one of the finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought 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 perform research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the job.
The current airline to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.
One really motivating development has been the move away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thereby a price spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in usage of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive 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 blended blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to satisfy another person's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Doyle Leal edited this page 2025-01-11 23:46:25 +00:00