It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might begin having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to come down to numerous types of biofuel.

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

Jatropha is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha 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 insects, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to carry out research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the task.

The current airline company to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating advancement has been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers consequently avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long back, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to please someone else's green credentials.