It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover practical alternatives to and these up until now seem to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted 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 including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
Jatropha is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, 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 carry out research study and advancement into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical experts for the job.
The most recent airline company to begin try out 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 mixture, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One truly encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thus avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use 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 vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to please somebody else's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Lorna Chabrillan edited this page 1 week ago