It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find practical alternatives to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to come down to various types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation 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 various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
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 pointed out Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and advancement into making 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 project.
The current 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 claimed, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.
One actually motivating development has been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thereby avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a undoubtedly if some people ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Charli Frost edited this page 2025-01-18 14:17:17 +08:00