Mission Biotechnologies Sdn. Bhd

Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied 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 appear to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

Jatropha 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 curcas as one of the finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to bring out research study and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical consultants for the task.

The latest airline to start exploring with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating advancement has been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers consequently avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize rates as US excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing undoubtedly if some people wound up starving simply to satisfy someone else’s green credentials.