It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at business 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 find practical options to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods.
jatropha curcas is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 cited Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to carry out research and advancement into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic specialists for the project.
The most recent airline to begin exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging advancement has been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thereby avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize prices 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 curcas and algae. It would be a mixed blessing undoubtedly if some individuals wound up starving simply to satisfy someone else's green credentials.
1
Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
blondellride71 edited this page 2025-01-12 05:40:15 +08:00