It's bad enough for some prop planes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at industrial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to various types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, 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 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 foods items.

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 cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to perform research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic experts for the project.

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

One really encouraging advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thus preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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