Jathropha Oil Used in Air New Zealand Flight
Published 1/1/2009 6:00:36 AM by staff from ecoistabode
Oil from the seeds of the jatropha plant helped power a New Zealand airliner in a test flight, at a time when airlines hit by high oil prices and pressured over the impact of planes on the environment seek greener fuels. The Boeing 747of Air New Zealand flew for two hours with one of its four engines powered by a half and half mixture of jet fuel and jatropha oil.
Jatropha is a plant that grows up to ten feet and produces inedible fruits, which contain the useful oil. It is grown on arid and marginal land in India, China, parts of Africa and other countries, and has been touted for mass production for biofuels because it does not compete for resources with food crops.
Air New Zealand hopes to use one million barrels of biofuel a year by 2013. This would contribute about 10% of its fuel consumption. The flight was the world's first commercial aviation test flight powered by jatropha.
"It is Air New Zealand's goal to become the worlds most environmentally sustainable airline and we have today made further significant progress towards this," Chief Executive Rob Fyfe said in the statement.
The fuel mixture performed well in a range of tests, the airline said. Other experts have warned that jatropha does not offer an easy answer to biofuels problems because it is toxic and yields are unreliable. It is also a labor intensive crop as each fruit ripens at a different time and needs to be harvested separately. Competitors Virgin Atlantic used a biofuel blend made from babassu and coconut oils in a commercial flight last February.
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