Virgin will use biodiesel in test flight
LinkAlthough no passengers will be on board, the contents of the plane's gas tank will have everyone in the airline industry watching. (...) Airline industry officials, environmentalists and energy companies all have a huge interest in the future of air travel as it pertains to fuel consumption, carbon emissions and global warming.
From the business perspective, the airlines are under great financial pressure because of soaring fuel costs; the price of crude oil is consistently flirting with $100 per barrel. On the environmental side of things, aircraft represent up to 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the U.S. transportation sector, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Additionally, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, greenhouse gas emissions from domestic aircraft are expected to increase 60 percent by 2025. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that increases in air transportation over the next 50 years will result in a threefold increase in aircraft CO{-2} emissions and a 13 percent increase in ozone.
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"Although the exact type of biofuel to be used has not been disclosed, the airline said it is a form that does not compete with food and freshwater resources."
I wonder what it is then. It can't be corn-based, which violates both of those restrictions, and several others besides (more petroleum goes into fertilizing it than is saved). Soybeans are competing with food. Is it palm oil? Palm oil biofuel is an ecological catastrophe. What other options are there?
I'm gonna guess the price of corn chips, burrittos etc are gonna go thru the roof, should this idea take off...
It must be emphasised that "biofuel" (I'd prefer "agrofuel") is potentially the biggest catastrophy you can imagine. Definitely the worst good idea of all times. IMHO.
It's nice that they're at least CONSIDERING using other fuels, but this is gonna go over like a lead balloon. >_>
Most likely it's algal. Ecologically it's much more sound - you literally just need water, sunlight and some trace nutrients. In theory, you can place the reactors in the middle of a desert, so there's no competition with food supplies. (Yes "agrofuel" as you put it is catastrophic, but it's not the only possible biofuel option.)
Not that it's commercially viable just yet, as some South African investors discovered last year, but prototype plants have been set up, and have probably managed to produce enough for one plane flight, at least.
pinup57, your argument, like that of most nay-sayers, assumes that corn will be the primary feedstock of biofuels. It would be potentially catastrophic if that was the case, but it by no means has to be.
Cellulose Biofuel is here, it's merely a question (significant, but not insurmountable) of ramping up production. Then we'll have fuel from all the dozens of agricultural and industrial by-products that just go to waste today. Like wood chips, switchgrass, corn stalks and husks, and even algae pools that can feed directly off of power plant emissions.
Used chip shop oil, maybe.
Whatever fuel is used, the problem goes deeper: is is really a good thing to move people thousands of kilometers away so they think they can escape what they're convinced (by advertisisng)is a boring, dreary, miserable life while increasing the global misery?
More to the point, Airbus did fly its A380 with natural gas (non-petroleum based) fuel:
http://www.airbus.com/en/presscentre/pressreleases/pressreleases_items/08_02_01_alternative_fuel.html
I'd like to see an evaluation of the impact of switching fuel on the amount of CO2 that is released per passenger per kilometer, compared to traditional passenger planes, train and cars...
First of all: Most planes dont run on diesel. And surely not commercial jet liners.
Then Virgin is just second with alternative fuels - the people at Airbus tried it out some days ago: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/02/a380-gtl-test-f.html
@ #6
Cellulose Biofuel is not even close to being a commercial proposition. We are currently stuck in space where we're about to switch from taking highly efficient if anciently formed fuel sources from the ground and replacing them with someones food. How does that make sense?
To whom does it make sense? This takes the benefits of the Green #Revolution and shoves them up an exhaust system.
Consider the guy in the SUV driving to the supermarket to buy bread using Agrofuels because of the cost of fossil fuels or the guy who can't earn enough to pay for bread for his family - due to the upward price rises of the raw materials (his food) consumed in agrobased biofuels?
It's a nonsense and as long as there are people starving from lack of food, the subsidy of biofuels should stop.
@ #7
I like this idea! It isn't likely - but wouldn't it be great for McDonalds? From sinner to healer in one step....
@ #9
Kerosene (Jet A1) is a very close cousin of diesel. The technical leap is not great between the two and Kero is often added to Diesel. I don't see your point.
Empty plane.
How green of them.
"I'd like to see an evaluation of the impact of switching fuel on the amount of CO2 that is released per passenger per kilometer, compared to traditional passenger planes, train and cars...
Well, if the fuel was made by plants TAKING carbon dioxide OUT OF the atmosphere to begin with (rather than by digging carbon up out of the ground), then the emissions of the overall process are zero...
(... well, other than for the emissions generated by processing the fuel, which are non-trivial, but are still less than they would be if all that carbon was extracted from the ground and then burned, which is the case with nearly all energy used in transportation today).
The US Air Force has been experimenting with alternative for a while. They have a half-kerosene-half-synthetic mix that seems to work as well as regular jet fuel and be cheaper. They are in the process of certifying all their aircraft to be fueled by it, a process that should take about 3-4 years. The B-52 is already certified, the C-17 is well on its way, and the B-1 is next.
And yes, the Fischer-Tropsch mix is currently derived from other fossil fuels, but it shows that the huge amount of fuel used by the aviation world could change towards some alternative if only someone big (like the USAF) takes the initiative.
More info on Fischer-Tropsch fuels in case anyone cares, from the C-17 article:
Fischer-Tropsch fuel can be synthesized from any carbon-based material, he said. "The process starts with carbon-based 'feedstock' -- this could be coal, natural gas or any other carbon-based material. Ultimately, it could be bio-mass or even trash"...
A Fischer-Tropsch fuel mix has the potential to burn cleaner than JP-8, he said. "During the process of creating the organic soup, you don't introduce a lot of particulates and unwanted materials like sulfur compounds"...
"In (the B-52 engine) tests, the use of the alternative fuel blend was found to reduce soot emissions by 30 percent at max power and by 60 percent at idle," said Dr. Tim Edwards, a senior chemical engineer for the Air Force Research Laboratory's Fuels Branch. "Sulfur emissions were reduced by 50 percent. These emissions reductions are due to the very high quality of the Fischer-Tropsch fuel blend component"...
"The goal is to make the cost of synthetic fuel comparable to buying JP-8".
They could be using left-over turkey or chicken parts to make the fuel!
A demand might be created, so that instead of throwing out your grease and food waste, you could get big money by recycling!
There's a lot of different options to make biofuel. It's only corn right now because we always had a surplus of corn and Archer-Daniels-Midland is in the pocket of every politician in the country and they are backing corn and soybeans to produce the biofuel.
The one thing we do know is that oil isn't a good choice anymore.
Given that Virgin is listed as an investor in Algal fuel (on the Wikipedia page linked to earlier) that's a pretty dang good guess as to what they're using.
@#11
Green has nothing to do with their use of an empty plane. Would you ride in an aircraft that was powered by an untested and experimental fuel?
It's simply a safety measure. It is, after all, a test.
They can't use turkey left-overs.
If they did, the plane would get very sleepy.
The neatest thing about algal or grass-based biofuel production would be that they don't necessarily have to use *fresh* water. They could use "clean" water from sewage plants, grey water, or any other source of not-quite-fresh water ... so long as there isn't anything that makes the grass angry, that is.
Or salt water!
as they're flying to Amsterdam I'd venture a guess they will be using hash-oil
sorry -- couldn't resist it
@#8 - what this planet needs is MORE people traveling outside of their bubbles. Not less.
I'm with #9.
The difference between JetA and diesel diesel is pretty small in terms of petrochemistry, but fairly big in terms of biochemistry - and this is biochemistry we're discussing.
@#6: No, my reaction assumes that whenever you succesfully create a market for such agrofuels, all the byproducts of the whole world wouldn't be enough to fulfill the demand, and rainforests will be chopped down for production of this new "agro-gold".
Amongst others.
And we will start struggling for centuries to try to get those countries to sing treaties in order to have them give up what's making them rich. Because once more, we would have acted first, ans started thinking afterwards.
What we definitely should do first, is trying to reduce significantly our need for transportation, as well as starting to produce repairable goods, and stop our trow-away culture.