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

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover practical alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family 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 bring out research study and development 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 latest airline to start explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed 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 damaging emissions by 10%.

One really motivating development has been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers thereby avoiding a . Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a mixed blessing certainly if some people ended up starving simply to satisfy someone else's green credentials.