Flight of Biofuels
Posted by kg1972 on December 31, 2008
Yesterday, a Air New Zealand Jumbo made a two-hour flight using a mix of legacy ATF and biofuels. The biofuel component was only 10%. In February, Virgin Atlantic made a flight between London and Amsterdam with a 20% biofuel mix. There can be no doubt that such flights are significant for being made in the first place. Of course, green activists continue to express some scepticism( see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/30/biofuel-test-plane). But in such flights, they should see the success of their own campaigning over many years. Secondly, people are not about to suddenly abandon flying and stop travelling from one continent to another-there has been no viable alternative provided. What is significant is the use of crops such as jatropha nuts, coconut and algae in these experiments. These can grow in most places and do not compete with food crops for arable space.
Boeing has made available a paper in which alternatives are examined http://www.boeing.com/commercial/environment/pdf/alt_fuels.pdf.
The scenarion of using synthetic fuels in the near term has been discussed. After all, this is a well-known solution, first used by the Germans in WW2 and then by the South Africans during the embargo years. Of course, the plausible option is for a mix of regular jet fuel and synthetic fuel to be used.Synthetic fuel may have issues in terms of performance of engine as well as cost of extraction, to become a complete alternative in itself.
Long term options being discussed include liquid hydrogen and liquid methane. Using such fuels is not easy and will require substantial and fundamental changes in engines, airframe and overall aircraft design. At this stage, it is difficult to understand when these scenarios may become reality. Still, we have seen electric and fuel cell cars become commercially possible in our lifetime. At the end of the day, the need of industries to look for alternative fuels with petroleum reserves declining, will spur innovation and invention to look for solutions. Of that, we can be very certain.
