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Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at business aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable options to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to different types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, 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 utilized different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods.

Jatropha 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 cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to perform research study and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical consultants for the project.

The latest airline company to start experimenting with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One actually motivating advancement has actually been the move away from biofuels which compete head on with food customers thereby avoiding a . Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing undoubtedly if some individuals wound up starving just to satisfy somebody else’s green credentials.

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