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

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to find practical options to standard kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to various types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used 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 foods items.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet . It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical experts for the task.

The current airline company to start try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights utilizing 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 motivating advancement has actually been the move away from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thus preventing a cost spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a combined blessing undoubtedly if some individuals ended up starving simply to satisfy somebody else's green credentials.