It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to come down to different types of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal 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.
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 mentioned Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic specialists for the project.
The current airline company to begin experimenting with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out 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 hazardous emissions by 10%.
One truly motivating advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thus avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some people ended up starving just to please another person's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
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