Mission Agroenergy Ltd

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  • Founded Date February 14, 1980
  • Sectors Office
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Company Description

Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum

It’s bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might begin having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible options to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to come down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

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

jatropha curcas is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and insects, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and advancement into the usage 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 job.

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

One actually encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thus avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long back, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will intake on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a mixed blessing indeed if some people wound up starving just to please somebody else’s green credentials.

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