It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find practical alternatives to traditional kerosene and these so far appear to come down to numerous kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
Jatropha is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds including 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 advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical experts for the task.
The most recent airline to start exploring with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging development has actually been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much 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 mixed true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving simply to please another person's green credentials.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
julia384053060 edited this page 2025-01-18 02:25:42 +08:00