Flying on grass

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: Biofuel-powered plane rides may not be very far, as new ideas for alternate energy and clean tech by the aviation industry are rapidly taking flight. In the face of unstable oil prices, airline companies are placing more hope on biofuels derived from plant sources such as jatropha and green algae. Good news is that results have been encouraging. Earlier this year, the US aircraft maker Boeing Company successfully demonstrated that biofuels can be applied to the existing airplane fleet, in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Until now, some of the major challenges of using biofuels in a commercial aircraft had been its propensity to freeze at normal operating cruising temperatures, its poorer high temperature thermal stability characteristics in the engine, and its storage stability over time. But Boeing announced that in initial tests, biofuels don’t affect performance and present no technical or safety problems, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50%. If such comforting news comes from one of the world’s biggest aircraft makers, we can certainly expect the green drive by the aviation industry to accelerate in future.

The success of the recent flight comes in the wake of similar sorties carried out by Boeing in the past. Last year, Boeing, Virgin Atlantic and GE Aviation proved the technical feasibility of using biofuels in a commercial jetliner by using a sustainable biofuel mixed with kerosene-based fuel. That effort was followed by a sustainable biofuels test flight last December with Air New Zealand and Rolls-Royce. And the work goes on. “We are working on heavy engines that have multi-fuel capabilities and are running those engines today on palm oil and tomorrow we will be running those engines on jathropa,” says GE John Welch Centre managing director, Guillermo Wille.

Clearly, aviation majors such as Boeing are helping guide the industry to support the development and commercialisation of a new generation of sustainable, plant-based fuel sources that offer a lower lifecycle carbon footprint and don’t compete with food and land resources. Since plant-based fuel sources absorb carbon dioxide when they are grown, fuels that are produced through sustainable growing practices have the potential to reduce the industry’s dependence on fossil fuels, while offering a 50-80% carbon dioxide reduction over the course of their lifetime, inform Boeing officials.