Jet fuels derived from plants may replace petroleum fuels by 2010, says Boeing

Jet fuels obtained from algae, camelina, and jatropha could replace petroleum fuels in commercial flights in 2010, if approved.

According to Bill Glover, managing director of environmental strategy for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, the technology is ready and “it is just a matter of growing enough non-food feedstock plants and refining enough of their oil.” 

Boeing Commercial Airplanes is leading efforts worldwide to develop, test, and certify alternative jet fuels. 

The plants algae, camelina and jatropha, which contains a lot of energy in them, are not eaten as food and hence cultivating them for jet fuel will not displace food crops. 

In the last one and a half years, commercial airlines have flown four successful test-flights using a variety of blends of biofuels. And, Boeing was involved in all the four flights. 

Those four test-flights with biofuels included a Virgin Atlantic flight using a biofuel blend derived from coconut and babassu and an Air New Zealand flight using a biofuel blend obtained from jatropha.

The other two flights were a Continental Airlines flight making use of a blend of biofuel made from algae and jatropha and a Japan Airlines flight using fuel made from a combination of algae, jatropha and camelina. 

Bill Glover was quoted by nytimes.com as saying: “We have proven the technical capability of biofuel as a drop-in replacement, and the biofuel meets all jet-fuel requirements and then some more.” 

The aviation industry has not only proved the technical capability but has also shown that biofuels could improve overall fuel efficiency, Glover added. 

Meanwhile, Air New Zealand, the national airline and flag-carrier of New Zealand, said the other day that using a 50% blend of biofuel with traditional jet A-1 fuel could improve fuel efficiency by over 1%, as shown by data collected during the test-flight conducted in December 2008 using a Boeing plane. 

This means that, on a flight lasting 12 hours, 1.43 metric tons of fuel could be saved and carbon dioxide emissions reduced by about 4.5 metric tons, Air New Zealand said in a statement. 

In other words, biofuel could reduce green-house gas emissions by up to 65% on long-haul flights compared to using petroleum-derived jet fuel, according to Air New Zealand. 

In June 2009, Bill Glover said, an alliance headed by Boeing Commercial Airplanes would release a full report on all the test-flights conducted so far, after which the international standards board that approves fuels and chemicals could certify plant-derived biofuels as jet A-1 fuel, by 2010. 

Once the biofuels are approved as jet A-1 fuel, they can right away be used as drop-in replacements, and aircraft are already certified to operate on anything known as jet A-1, Glover explained.