Airline in first biofuel flight

Airline in first biofuel flight

news.bbc.co.uk

The first flight by a commercial airline to be powered partly by biofuel has taken place.
A Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet has flown between London's Heathrow and Amsterdam using fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts.
Environmentalists have branded the flight a publicity stunt and claim biofuel cultivation is not sustainable.
Earlier this month, Airbus tested another alternative fuel - a synthetic mix of gas-to-liquid.

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Related News Links:
www.reuters.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Virgin Atlantic sets February flight to test biofuel
UK parliamentary committee calls for biofuel moratorium

This is pretty cool.

Way better than burning petroleum for the fuel.

I disagree with the biofuel being unsustainable though. Perhaps the ingredients, yes.

But hemp seems to be a much better alternative in the first place. We could also diversify with switchgrass and algae.

Switchgrass and hemp can be grown in pretty much any biome and need little to no water.

The beauty with them is that they're weeds. They can be left to take care of themselves and still turn out pretty good.

Algae can be grown in pretty much any water source.

A promising source of algae which serves two purposes has been coal-fired power plants.

Algae has been found growing in the output waste water from coal plants and we could encourage algail growth with the proper measures.

I see this flight as a step in the right direction, although it is certainly a publicity stunt.

However, it is great news. Airplanes CAN be powered with biofuels, as can diesel automobiles and gasoline engines as well.

We don't need to be burning petroleum for our vehicles.

That means no more dependence on foreign oil, a better economy, more jobs, and less pollution.

Who wouldn't be for that?

That is, unless you have interests in pumping oil out of the ground.

Sorry Texaco, Shell, etc.

But your time in the oil business has come to an end.

And hemp is the answer.

"This pioneering flight will enable those of us who are serious about reducing our carbon emissions to go on developing the fuels of the future," he said.

But he said fully commercial biofuel flights were likely to use feedstocks such as algae rather than the mix used on the passenger-less flight.

Virgin Atlantic even knows about algae...How awesome is that?

The technology is still being manufactured by companies GE and Boeing, but Virgin believes airlines could routinely be flying on plant power within 10 years.

10 years seems like a long time, but its really not.

And technology always advances faster than scientists want to admit it does...Just it gets suppressed usually.

We'll find biofuel cars in the mainstream next year.

More diesel cars are being produced already and there's biofuel pump stations already in the works.

Heck, if we use gasoline pump stations and switch it to biofuel we don't even need to do that much work for cars!




news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by biggie smalls


Of course there are always those who say this is bad news.

Kenneth Richter, of Friends of the Earth, said the flight was a "gimmick", distracting from real solutions to climate change.
"If you look at the latest scientific research it clearly shows biofuels do very little to reduce emissions," he said.
"At the same time we are very concerned about the impact of the large-scale increase in biofuel production on the environment and food prices worldwide.
"What we need to do is stop this mad expansion of aviation. At the moment it is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases in the UK, and we need to stop subsidising the industry."

I disagree that biofuels 'do little.' That is simply not the case.

Let's see...In terms of pollution, burning living plant material (oil nonetheless) is infinitely less harmful than dead plant and animal material that's been rotting for millions of years.

Besides, we have water powered vehicles that keep being suppressed that we could be using, but the geniuses over at the US federal government couldn't give a # less.

That would be a zero emission engine, but no, too little profit.

And then there would be some who cry about how we are using water that could be used otherwise.

What are we supposed to do, stop moving around? Just all sit still, consume, and die?

He doesn't seem to realize all the sequestered carbon when we grow the crops for fuel.

Atmospheric carbon would be held in the biomass as well as the soil when the plants die.

He neglected to mention that.

I agree that travel needs to become more sustainable, but let's be honest, people aren't going to travel less.

Its just not going to happen.

We are hunter-gatherers by nature, I don't see us stopping from moving around.

Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know themselves.

Except that biofuel has a few MAJOR drawbacks. For one if you grow crops for biofuel that's less land for food. For another unless the engine is designed to run on biofuel it sticks to it and can cause long term damage.

The Air Force is going a completely different route that seems to be much better. They're using synthetic fuels. They're using a method that converts ANY carbon based product into fuel, and mixing it with their current JP8 fuel. The JP8 is needed because it has certain things that the planes need that the synthetic fuel lacks. So far they have flown an F-15(IIRC) a B-52 (in temps as low as -25 with windchill, which is another thing that biofuel has a problem with), and a C-17. Coming up are tests involving a B-1 bomber.

Using the synthetics on the B-52 cut emissions 30% at full power, 60% at idle, and cut over all sulfur emissions by 50%.

reply to post by Zaphod58


If you read the source, you would see they mentioned ALGAE as the future fuel source.

I also gave alternative examples such as HEMP and SWITCHGRASS which are not food crops (for the most part hemp isn't eaten in the US anyway).

I think we need to be heading to ZERO emissions, not reduced.

Percentages don't mean # when you still release millions if not billions of tons of carbon, nitric oxide, sulfur, and other pollutants every year.

The US Air Force is one of the highest releasers (is that a word?) of pollutants into the atmosphere, land, and sea.

That's where it needs to be dealt with. The civilian side will follow.

As long as the military is manufacturing depleted uranium shells (radiation) and blowing stuff up daily it won't do the least amount of good using biofuels for civilian transportation.

We need to think BIG. And way outside the box.

The box hasn't solved any of our problems so far, why would it help us now with highly complex problems that change all the time?

The freezing problem is being dealt with right now, but the technology for planes may take longer than land transportation unfortunately.

But we're smart enough to be able to figure something out.

That may mean we have to fly closer to the ground, but so be it.

[edit on 2/24/2008 by biggie smalls]

And the stickiness? No matter what you use, that's not going to go away. So unless we want to force the airlines to pay MILLIONS to use totally redesigned engines or buying totally new airplanes (which they're going to have to pass on to us or go out of business) the best way to go is synthetics. The A380 with Airbus has already done a synthetic flight as well as the ones I mentioned.

I work for a trucking company, and we don't allow ANY use of biodiesel unless they're in an emergency fuel situation, because it will void our engine warranty. It sticks to all the moving parts of the engine and causes long term damage.

reply to post by Zaphod58


I agree its not a perfect solution, but its better than what we got.

The problem with synthetics is that they're not sustainable. You can't grow more. In a laboratory maybe, but not everyone has a backyard lab.

This may work for the military, but in the long run it'll be cheaper to use renewable energy.

As for the stickiness...Well you got me there. We'd have to not use things like peanut oil.

Algae oil seems very promising.

Do you have any data on the stickiness of algae?

I can't imagine that would be a problem.

Biofuels you are probably thinking of are used cooking oil which is not the best source anyway.

The stickiness problem would be solved with using living (well almost) plant oils.

The synthetics that are in testing can use ANY carbon based items. That means plants, fossils, anything you want that has carbon in it. I'd have to say that's pretty sustainable considering every life form on the planet is carbon based. You can set up greenhouses that grow nothing but plants to be used in it. Or even use the same algae that was going to be used for the biofuel and convert it to synthetics.

I am not convinced that Biofuels are the answer. I definitely think that they are a decent alternative and it is much better to use old grease as biofuel than to just throw it away. But to actually grow crops for airlines seems to be a little wrong at this point.

It would be nice if we had a perfect system where the only food used for biofuels was food that was spoiled anyways. It is tough to look at a picture of someone starving somewhere and knowing how much food was just burned in a fuel tank.

As was mentioned above, there are some promising develpments in Biofuels that would be less impactive in the future. As it stands right now though, it just doesn't seem practical yet. The "synthetic fuel" sounds like a better alternative until further developments can be made.

Here's the page from the Air Force about their synthetic program. It's an interesting read.

www.af.mil...

I'd like to see fuel that doesn't involve any kind of burning, but that probably won't hit the mainstream for some time now.

NASA uses hydrogen fuel for its space missions, but that's still burning a substance which is pretty inefficient.

If we can somehow tap electro-magnetic fields for an energy source I think we'd be much better off.

Nuclear fuel doesn't seem very viable nor realistic (its also expensive).

Thanks for the link Zaphod and I didn't know any carbon source can be converted.

I'm curious why it need to be synthetic though? Why can't they use natural processes for their fuel?

Karlhungis,

I agree biofuels aren't the one answer, but they may be a great solution for personal transportation.

If they do indeed freeze and stick to engines, there must be some way to mix in other natural chemicals to make them useful.

I think you're missing the point though.

Biofuels DO NOT have to be food-derived.

That's a common misconception. A lot of it is taken from used grease from fryers, but that's not the greatest source.




[edit on 2/24/2008 by biggie smalls]

If we want to talk about synthetic fuels we might as well bring up the wood gasifiers.

Be your own refinery!

en.wikipedia.org...

Awesome ! A little bulky though....
en.wikipedia.org...

I believe Syntroleum Corp. is behind a good chunk of the fuel technology Zaphod58 mentions for the Air Force etc. I could be wrong on that though.

The stock is a horror show.



15 bucks to 68 cents. Pow.

reply to post by biggie smalls


I do get the point that it doesn't "need" to be made of foodstocks, but the fact is that at the state we are in now, it usually is made of them. That is the point I was getting at, Biofuels aren't the answer yet, but do show some promise if we can get away from using food as fuel. From the article, they used food for the test flight...

using fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts.

Until we see someone strictly using feasable non food biofuels, I will still be a skeptic.