It's bad enough for some prop airplanes 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 market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to come down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel 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 various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

jatropha curcas 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 finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic specialists for the job.

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

One really motivating advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers consequently avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined true blessing indeed if some people ended up starving just to satisfy another person's green qualifications.