It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics might start having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover practical options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous kinds of .

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

jatropha curcas is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to perform research study and advancement into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the project.

The current airline company to start try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One actually motivating development has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers therefore preventing a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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