It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover practical options to standard kerosene and these so far appear to come down to numerous types of biofuel.
Not remarkably, 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 use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods items.
Jatropha is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the very best 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 moved to bring out research and development into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic experts for the project.
The most recent airline company to start explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One truly encouraging advancement has been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thus preventing a cost spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel intake 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.