It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods items.
jatropha curcas is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and insects, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated 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 tactical consultants for the task.
The current airline company to begin experimenting with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed 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 harmful emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging development has been the relocation far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thus avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined true blessing indeed if some people ended up starving just to please another person's green credentials.
1
Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
valbarrera7574 edited this page 2025-01-12 05:49:12 +01:00