It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to different types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use 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 which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods items.
jatropha curcas is a genus of approximately 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 very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and insects, 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 carry out research study and advancement into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic consultants for the job.
The most current airline company to begin try out 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 mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging advancement has been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers consequently preventing a rate spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some people wound up starving simply to satisfy another person's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
robertanicklin edited this page 2025-01-11 21:49:17 +08:00