It's bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might begin having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

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

jatropha curcas is a genus of roughly 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 very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the task.

The most recent airline company to begin experimenting with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging advancement has actually been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thus preventing a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a combined true indeed if some people ended up starving simply to please somebody else's green credentials.