It's bad enough for some prop planes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to various types of biofuel.
Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
jatropha curcas is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical specialists for the task.
The most current airline company to start try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One actually motivating development has actually been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thus avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much corn to .
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a combined blessing certainly if some individuals ended up starving simply to please another person's green qualifications.
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Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
Modesta Huckstep edited this page 2025-01-14 12:50:54 +01:00