Just 8 months after Virgin Atlantic flew a 747 from London to Amsterdam on coconut and babassu nut biofuel, Air New Zealand has done it also.
Air New Zealand, Boeing, Rolls-Royce and Honeywell modified the engines on a 747-400 to run on half Jet A1 fuel and half jatropha oil. The jatropha plant is pretty remarkable. This common plant from India produces nuts that contain 30 to 40 percent oil that can be converted into biofuel. It has been used previously to power cars, but this is the first time it has been used for an airplane.
What would be more impressive though is an airplane powered by a real Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future. You’d just need to stop be a landfill to refuel.
Great! Hopefully this technologies will keep comin’
I wonder why these aren’t used more heavily for vehicles while we migrate away from gas.
Jon
http://buzvia.com – Where’s Your Traffic Going?
Biofuel airplanes? When are we going to make mass changes to all of our transportation? I’m looking forward to putting my garbage in my gas tank! I just noticed that gas prices jumped up again today.
-Justin Razmus
http://www.justinrazmus.com
Hope biofuel dies soon. The idea is nice, but most people didn’t think of the consequences: Just imagine how much land you need to ‘grow fuel’ and then think how many people allready suffer hunger (actually last years report says 1/5 of the world population).
Biofuel increases this problem extremely. Sorry to disappoint you guys, but the best way is just to save energy.
A fundamental rule of science I was taught in 8th grade ( a very long time ago):
For every problem you solve, you create at least two more. The same is with biofuels as noted above.
I was driving up the highway early one morning last week. I had not eaten breakfast and – for some reason – couldn’t get the thought of McDonald’s hash browned potatoes out of my mind. I never eat that stuff. Lucky for me, there were no McDonald’s nearby. A few miles up the road, though, I could SMELL those hash browns. Then, I passed a diesel Benz wagon. Suddenly the urge to eat McDonald’s – and the smell – were gone.
Certainly not good for the vasculatur, there is no-way that spraying the environment with uncombusted vegetable oil can be a good thing.
Here’s a good one:
http://www.boligan.com/images/1212436778CRISISYETANOLboli.jpg
@Arun: Don’t worry, here in Germany the government supported bio fuel until the green party started a study and made clear that this Munchhausen-trick doesn’t work until we are much less people on earth.
I still like the idea behind it to grow fuel, but it just takes even more acres from the poor to transportate the rich(er).