Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum > 자유게시판

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

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods items.

Jatropha is a genus of around 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 finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research 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 strategic consultants for the job.

The newest airline company to start try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One really motivating development has actually been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thereby a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green credentials.