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 airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find practical options to standard kerosene and these so far 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 restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods.

jatropha curcas is a genus of approximately 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 prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research study and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic specialists for the task.

The most recent airline company to start try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using 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 motivating advancement has actually been the move away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers therefore preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

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