Use Biofuels as Alternative Fuel

On a morning in February 2008, Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, along with representatives from Boeing and GE Aviation, invited journalists to a hangar at London's Heathrow Airport to witness a historic aviation event: a Boeing 747 took off on the world’s first flight powered by biofuel, a mixture of coconut and Brazilian babassu plants. In this flight, only one of the Boeing 747's four engines used the bio-fuel blend.

The purpose of this flight was to demonstrate the feasibility of the environmental-friendly biofuel as an alternative aviation fuel. This fuel was produced by the largest supplier of biodesiel in the US, Imperium Renewables.

The flight is considered to be significant for two reasons: 1) jet fuel costs are getting expensive and 2) air transport becomes the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases. According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the airline industry consumes 13% of the fossil fuels used by the transportation sector worldwide. As a result, there are mounting pressures for research and development groups to find alternative jet fuels.

The goal is to develop a compound that can slow down global warming without compromising the aviation industry's growth. The ideal solution is to have a fuel that can power today's airplanes, can blend in today's infrastructure and can pack the same energy punch that fossil fuels do. The fuel must stay in liquid form at the low temperatures that surround an aircraft in flight.

Scientists and politicians alike recognize the need to develop sustainable alternative fuels that would reduce green house gas emissions without contributing to further environmental destruction. Biodiesel is an ideal solution. It's environmental-friendly, renewable, biodegradable and relatively safe to handle and store. Biofuel can be derived domestically and, most importantly, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Sustainability of biofuel is one of the key challenges in trying to use biofuels in the aviation industry. Recent claims that increased demand for ethanol has contributed to soaring food prices. With the world population increases at a rapid rate and there is a food shortage worldwide, using food crops and plants as the source for fuels does not seem to be such a good idea. In fact, growing crops for alternative fuels cuts into the land available for growing food.

In recent weeks, such arguments have gained credibility, threatening the very core of the biofuel movement. On April 11, in a Washington meeting of finance ministers to address rising food costs, ministers from poorer countries suggested the West to reconsider their alternative fuel policies in light of a growing food shortage. On the same day, a European environmental advisory panel asked the European Union to consider scrapping its plan to have at least 10% of transportation fuel come from biofuels by the year 2020.

In research, scientists have to overcome barriers pertaining to the use of biofuel in aircrafts. Unless it is heated, biofuel becomes frozen at high altitude. Jet fuel's strict performance standards and the extreme temperatures at which aircrafts operate have made it difficult to develop a workable jet fuel. In comparison to petroleum-based fuels, biodiesel has a lower density and it reduces the range an aircraft can fly without refueling.

While the test flight proved the biofuel's ability to power aircrafts, this biofuel can never be an alternative fuel as coconut and babassu don't represent a sustainable resource for the 87 billion gallons of fuel needed each year to fly the world’s airlines. Experts believe fuel made from algae is more appropriate and sustainable to be considered as the jet fuel of the future.

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