It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started 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 consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods.

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 cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to bring out research study and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical consultants for the project.

The most recent airline to begin try out 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 mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating development has been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some individuals wound up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.