It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics could start having a dig at industrial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to various types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered 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 jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and development into using 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 newest airline to start explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has 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 harmful emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging development has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers therefore preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing undoubtedly if some people wound up starving just to satisfy another person's green qualifications.