It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics could start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover practical options to traditional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different 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 foods items.

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical specialists for the job.

The current airline company to start explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted 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 hazardous emissions by 10%.

One actually motivating advancement has been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long back, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a mixed blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving simply to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.