It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible options to standard kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to various kinds 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 restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of 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 family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to carry out research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic specialists for the job.
The current airline company to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from . This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One truly encouraging development has been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers consequently preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some people ended up starving simply to please someone else's green credentials.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
marineitenstei edited this page 2025-01-12 10:52:35 +08:00