It's bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might begin having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to numerous types of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the 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 use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different 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 foodstuffs.
jatropha curcas 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 pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the 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 transferred to perform research and development into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical specialists for the job.
The most current airline to begin exploring with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.
One truly motivating advancement has been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thus avoiding a . Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing certainly if some individuals ended up starving simply to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Armando Larocque edited this page 7 months ago