It's bad enough for some propeller planes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods.

Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha 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 major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to perform research study and advancement into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical consultants for the task.

The most recent airline to begin exploring with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thus avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars and a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended true blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.