Jets Could Fly on Green Fuel in 2010

Bio-fuels made from a range of non-food plants could be powering commercial airliners as soon as next year, a Boeing executive says.

Camelina growing in a Montana field.

“We’ve proven the technical capability of biofuel as a drop-in replacement,” says Bill Glover, managing director of environmental strategy for Boeing’s Seattle-based Commercial Airplanes business unit. “It meets all jet fuel requirements and then some.”

Boeing says it’ll release a report next month experiments that it and four airlines have been running using oils derived from different plants, includling algae. After that, it’ll seek certification for using the plants as fuel stocks. From that point, it’s just a matter of growing and processing enough of them to make it viable

The results are promising. Air New Zeland last month said that its experiments with oils derived from seeds of the jatropha plant showed a slight improvement in fuel efficiency and a 65 percent drop in greenhouse gase emissions when the fuel was mixed 50-50 with standard kerosene-based jet fuel. The 1.2 percent fuel savings equals more than a ton of fuel for a 747 on a trans-Pacific flight.

Algae is the best-known of the experimental fuel stocks, but it’s probably a decade away from being a reliable source, The New York Times reports. However, fuels derived from camelina are ready now. Camelina is a relative of canola and mustard, and according to Purdue University, it was grown as a crop in Eastern Europe during the Roman era. It fell out of favor during the Middle Ages, and has since been considered mostly a weed; however, some has been grown for use producing industrial oils, and the seeds are sometimes fed to birds.