It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at industrial 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 and these up until now seem to come down to various types of biofuel.

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

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research study and advancement into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic consultants for the job.

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

One truly motivating advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers therefore avoiding a price spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in use of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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