It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might begin having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to traditional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.
jatropha curcas is a genus of around 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 finest 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 aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as for the task.
The most current airline company to begin try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One really encouraging advancement has been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers consequently preventing a cost spiral. Not so long back, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green credentials.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
kaiw9328833705 edited this page 2025-01-12 00:39:43 +08:00