New Zealand airline flies Boeing 747 on biofuel

Air New Zealand said one engine of the plane was powered by a 50-50 blend of oil from jatropha plants from Tanzania and standard A1 jet fuel. They weren't able to say as yet that it would be cheaper -- since jatropha is not yet produced on a commercial scale. However the company spokeswoman said it would probably be "cost competitive". The plant is perfect for poor-soil farming: African farmers on poor soil have been using it for years to stop soil erosion and earn extra cash: harvesting the inedible bean oil to manufacture soap and lamp oil for local markets. see With a larger demand for jatropha, it would be an immense cash-crop boost for farmers worldwide who now are barely eking out a living on poor, low-yield soils. If they can sell their oil to airlines, huge tracts of deserts would be 'greened' too. And since there are only about 20,000 commercial airliners worldwide with a relatively low number of fuelling points i.e. commercial airports, the airline industry is perfectly suited to start developing its own biofuel. Air New Zealand said they chose the jatropha bean because it was exactly right for their criteria. These farmers could use previously unused tracts of arid land to plant these shrubs, which require very little water and thrive in poor soil. And the world's valuable high-yield food-crop fields would then also not have to be diverted into biofuel manufacture - as is now being done on a massive scale with corn and sunflower, food-crops growing on high-yield, valuable fields and which now often are turned into biofuel. Biofuels were once regarded as impractical for aviation -- because most freeze at cruising altitudes. However jatropha is different: its (inedible) seeds yield an oil already used to produce fuels like biodiesel and has an even lower freezing point than jet fuel. See Milestone Air New Zealand Chief Executive Rob Fyfe called the flight "a milestone for the airline and commercial aviation. Today we stand at the earliest stages of sustainable fuel development and an important moment in aviation history," he said shortly after the flight. The company's goal is to become the world's most environmentally sustainable airline. The flight was the first to use jatropha as part of a biofuel mix.

No competition with food crops While the link between biofuels and grain prices is still debatable, Mills said that jatophra plants would not compete with food or other commercial crops since it is inedible for livestock and humans - and can be grow on very arid land. African farmers often plant the shrubs as hedges around a land parcel which they want to protect from erosion and earn extra cash by turning the oil into a very pleasant antibiotic soap. Wildlife and livestock avoid the shrub. "Ethanol is a first generation biofuel; jatophra a second generation biofuel that doesn't compete for land with food production," Mills said. Jatopha requires very little water to flourish in very arid, poor soil. The test flight out of Auckland International Airport included a full-power takeoff and cruised to 10,600 meters, where the crew manually set all four engine controls to check for identical performance readings among the biofuel-powered engine and those using jet fuel. Pilots also switched off the fuel pump for the biofuel engine at 7,600 meters "to test the lubricity of the fuel" - i.e. to make certain that the friction in the pipe would not slow down the flow to the engine. Air New Zealand Group Manager Ed Sims cautioned that it probably will be at least 2013 before the company can ensure easy access to the large quantities of jatropha it would need to use the biofuel on all of its flights. "Clearly we are a long, long way from being able to source commercially quantifiable amounts of the fuel and then be able to move that amount of fuel around the world to be able to power the world's airlines is still some years off," Sims told New Zealand's National Radio. The company bought the seeds from plantations in East Africa and India that total 125,000 hectares. The company hopes that by 2013, 10% of its flights will be powered, at least in part, by biofuels, Mills said. Most of those using the blend would be short haul domestic services.