Airplanes and Biofuel

I would surmise that almost everyone reading this is cognizant of the push to reduce our overzealous use of fossil fuels and concurrently, the push to reduce CO2 emissions world wide.  One of the biggest challenges that is being faced is how to reduce amount of fossil fuel used by airplanes and the enormous amount of CO2 that is belched into the atmosphere every day from their engines.  Yet despite the challenges and related cost, companies are forging ahead by mixing bio fuel with regular jet fuel to help the environment.   The newest plant oil that is being mixed with jet fuel is from the tropical jatropha shrub.  The plant itself, and the fruit it produces is not edible and has no other use except as a hedge.  This is vitally important as the use of this plant does not deprive humans of a food source as some other bio fuels do.  That being said, however, the cost of producing the oil from the seeds of the jatropha fruit is 2.5 times higher than the cost of producing regular jet fuel.  Is it worth it?  It all depends on who you talk to.  The added cost of the bio fuel would obviously be passed on to passengers and is currently the only major downside to utilizing the bio fuel.  The bio fuel can not be used entirely to fuel the engines as it doesn't have the energy output of regular jet fuel, but it can be added until the overall fuel reaches a 50/50 mixture.  Just by replacing half of the regular jet fuel with bio fuel, emissions can be cut from 60 - 80%.  That is pretty amazing in my mind and well worth pursuing if we are to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.  (For the full article used for inspiration, click here.)

So now that this plant, along with other non-food plant sources are being utilized for jet fuel, what is being done to combat the higher price?  A lot actually.  Scientists are searching for different strains of the jatropha plant that can produce higher yields of the fruit.  By getting higher yields from one plant, it partially reduces the cost.  There is also efforts being made to increase the yield of the plants they already know about through genetic engineering so that they can get more fuel per acre.  As the engineering of the jatropha plant is still in the early stages, there is still a long way to go in terms of increasing its yield, but I am sure that the scientists will make headway as they did with modifying corn and other food sources.  They were able to modify these other crops to survive in harsh conditions while still producing larger amounts of food and as such, they will surely be able to do the same with the jatropha plant.  Perhaps the best part of this whole story is that it is already being tested in planes, in some planes up to six months continually, to see if there are any adverse effects on the engine from the mixture.   So far, everything is working perfectly and the engines show no extra signs of fatigue or wear from the use of bio fuel mixed with the regular jet fuel.  There is still a long way to go with this technology and a lot more that can be done, but the movement is in the right direction.

Ultimately, it seems that the goal of airlines should be to find an alternative fuel that they can use exclusively in place of jet fuel.  It would be difficult as not many other fuels come close to the same energy capacity that fossil fuels provide, but the effort in my mind needs to be made.  Even if they could achieve a mixture in which 25% was jet fuel and other other 75% was bio fuel, it would be hard to refute the benefits to the environment.  Yet for now, we must hope that they figure out a way of reducing the cost of the bio fuel so that the cost of air travel does not grow exponentially.  Although if we begin to run out of fossil fuels, which we will inevitably do at some point, the cost of the fossil fuel will most likely exceed that of the bio fuel and there would be no option left except to use bio fuel to its fullest capacity.  Overall, the movement towards greener more renewable sources of energy is well on its way and is not likely to disappear any time soon.  There is great potential for job growth in this sector as new technologies are needed.  Let us not forget that we all occupy this planet and the only way to ensure its survival is to minimize our impact on it.  It will be a long arduous process to try and undo what we have done, but we are taking steps in the right direction and hopefully more and more people will get on board with these efforts.