On 28 October Air China conducted its first trial flight of a passenger jet powered by a mix of biofuel and traditional aviation fuel.

The Jet A-1 biofuel kerosene used in the flight was derived from the seeds of tung trees, more commonly known as jatropha.

Air China’s Boeing 747-400 landed safely at Beijing Capital International Airport at 9:30 a.m. after burning more than 10 tons of the biofuel, a 50-50 mixture of traditional Jet A-1 derived from oil and Jet A-1 processed from the jatropha seeds. The jatproha Jet A-1 is what’s known as a drop-in, simply being admixed in a 50-50 ratio with conventional Jet A-1, and requires no engine modifications.

Air China Vice President He Li said the composition and the burning efficiency of the biofuel admixture had been tested along with its impact on the Boeing 747’s four Pratt and Whitney JT9D high-bypass turbofan engines.

The Hydro-treated Renewable Jet Fuel (HRJ) used Honeywell/ Universal Oil Products’ process to produce the biofuel. According to Jennifer Holmgren , UOP’s former director for renewable energy and chemicals, UOP licenses the process “nonexclusively.” UOP said in a statement, “The flight is a result of a broader effort kicked-off in 2010 by China’s National Energy Administration and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency to address the technical, economic and institutional factors required for the development of a new biofuels industry in China.”

Air China is the People’s Republic of China flag carrier and one of the country’s major airlines, the world’s tenth largest airline company according to fleet size, operating nine Boeing 747s scheduled to be phased out. Air China has already retired five Boeing 747s.

According to the International Energy Agency, China will lead the world in “demand growth” for jet fuel through 2012, reaching 5.6 percent. Total worldwide demand for Jet A-1 is forecast to reach 239.4 million gallons per day during the same period, compared 214.2 million gallons in 2007, a demand-growth rate of 2.3 percent. A 2007 422-page National Petroleum Council study, Facing the Hard Truths About Energy, reports that global demand for energy, including jet fuel – will grow by as much as 60 percent by 2030. It is China’s growing civilian air capacity that makes the test significant, as China Civil Aviation Administration official Zhang Hongying said following the test that the jatropha-derived biofuel was now ready to be used for commercial flights.

The Air China test flight is the world’s sixth such demonstration flight using Jet A-1 derived from jatropha.

The success was long in coming. PetroChina vice president Shen Diancheng remarked that it had taken PetroChina a decade to overcome the technical barriers of converting jatropha oil into Jet A-1 aircraft, but now that tests have proven its viability, PetroChina expects to ramp up production to 60,000 tons of jatropha Jet A-1 annually by 2014.

China’s interest in developing biofuels for industrial use is growing rapidly. In late 2009 Boeing and China signed a biofuel agreement with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese universities calling for research and development that potentially could support commercialization of jatropha. China has been proactive in the biofuel area for a number of years, with jatropha planted in 2007, and the plant – either wild or cultivated – can be found in Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces as well as the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous
region. Yunnan currently has 33,000 hectares under cultivation and the Xinhua news agency reports that the country will have 13 million hectares of biofuel plantations by 2020 that will produce 6 million tons of biodiesel annually.

But commercial jatropha production has its bottlenecks. While jatropha grows wild in tropical regions and can be cultivated on land not suitable for crops, it produces a lot more on cropland, suggesting that if it becomes popular, airlines will have to be careful that it is not squeezing out crop production. Initial field tests of jatropha cultivation suggest that high oil yields require that the plant receive water, nutrients, and soil conditions that are comparable to many food crops.

A substantial drawback to jatropha is that it is currently harvested manually and commercial producers have found that the plant is more labor intensive than originally thought, especially for harvesting.

Despite these setbacks, commercial jatropha production is underway or being established abroad. Abundant Biofuels Corporation, which is headquartered in California, has jatropha cultivation projects underway in the Philippines, Columbia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. D1 Oils plc of London, United Kingdom, has announced large projects in India, Malawi, and Zambia. A number of companies are reported to have recently acquired rights to cultivate jatropha in Ghana. The central and some state governments of India are promoting jatropha production on tens of millions of acres, although these efforts have been criticized for potential adverse impacts on forested areas, biodiversity, and food production. Early yields in India have been below expectations.

Accordingly, commercial firms growing jatropha and airlines worldwide will be watching events in China with great interest. Fuel and oil comprise 25 percent of airlines’ operating costs and when the price of jet fuel rises one cent, it increases the global cost of aviation $195 million.

Given the fiscal resources available in China, it therefore seems most likely that jatropha commercial aviation biofuel production will arise their first, if sufficient land not impacting the nation’s food production can be found.

Perhaps in the future the East will not be so red as green.

Article by John C.K. Daly, appearing courtesy Oilprice.com

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Australia’s Jatenergy Limited energy company is to provide crude jatropha oil to Lufthansa for flight trials.

The Lufthansa tests are the world’s first, long-term trial of renewable jet fuel and will be used on Lufthansa’s regularly scheduled flights between Hamburg and Frankfurt.

Jatenergy is providing Lufthansa with 200 tons of crude jatropha oil at $1,000 per ton from its joint venture with PT Waterland International, which was refined into civilian aviation Jet A-1 biojet fuel by Finnish firm Neste Oil, The International Business Times reported.

Jatenergy CEO Phil Hodgson said, “We can’t produce enough jatropha oil at the moment to meet demand. Apart from sales to airlines such as Lufthansa, there is also interest from power generators and traditional biodiesel producers at prices linked to vegetable oils such as palm oil. Palm oil has priced between $1,000-1,250 per ton during 2011, which is around $140-180 per barrel. Our average ex-works production costs for the oil are around $460 per ton, or $65 per barrel.”

Interest in “drop in” biofuels has soared since the the standards group ASTM International recently approved the blending of up to 50 per cent of biofuel with conventional Jet A-1 fuel.

Article by Joao Peixe, appearing courtesy OilPrice.com.

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Slowly but surely, an extraordinarily important new industry is slowly taking shape, with the potential to transform the global economy.

After years of existing largely as an environmentalist’s fantasy, commercial production of biofuels for the world civil aviation industry is slowly becoming a fact, with production starting up across three continents.

The leading contenders for biofuel feedstocks are jatropha and camelina, both of which have their fervent supporters. While currently neither is capable of production at a price approaching that of Jet A1 civil aviation fuel derived from hydrocarbons, research and extensive investment are nevertheless investigating the possibilities.

While little is certain in the emerging picture, it is increasingly clear that despite the United States being one of the leading producers currently of renewable energy in the form of ethanol, that the United States nevertheless will be an also-ran in these developments.

In January 2010 Qatar Airways revealed plans to work with Airbus and other Qatari state entities to draw up “a detailed engineering and implementation plan for economically viable and sustainable biofuel production.” At an event marking the launch of the Qatar Advanced Biofuel Platform consortium, airline chief Akbar al Baker hailed its European project partner as “more proactive than Boeing in experimenting with alternative fuels.”

Fast forward to this March, when a European consortium of Airbus, Romanian state-owned airline Tarom, Honeywell’s UOP and CCE (Camelina Company España) announced plans to establish a bio-fuel production center in Romania to manufacture civil aviation fuel, using camelina as a feedstock.

Farther east, last month China National Petroleum Corp. announced that it had delivered 15 tons of jatropha oil to help Air China operate the country’s maiden biofuel-powered test flight, tentatively scheduled for later this year. According to a posting on its website, CNPC, Asia’s largest oil producer, is proving that it has the ability to produce biofuel from non-grain feedstocks to clean up the environment.

On Monday, Mozambique’s Agencia Informacao Mocambique news agency announced that Sun Biofuels Mozambique, a subsidiary of U.K.-based Sun Biofuels, has exported the first batch of 30 tons of jatropha oil produced from its fields in the central Mozambican province of Manica to Germany’s Lufthansa airline.

The biggest single impetus to the development of biofuels for civil aviation occurred on 8 June, when the international standards certifying body ASTM International announced its approval of its BIO SPK Fuel Standard, to be made official later in the year, allowing the use of hydro-treated renewable jet (HRJ) Jet A-1 fuel in commercial aviation.

Currently these biofuels are “drop ins,” and must be blended in a 50-50 mixture with Jet A-1 fuel derived from traditional fossil fuel kerosene.

The biggest single independent meant at present to a wide scale production of jet biofuel is its inordinate cost. Biojet fuel delivered last year to the U.S. armed forces for evaluation cost more than $70 a gallon to produce, a price which obviously makes it at present supremely uncompetitive with fuel derived from traditional hydrocarbon sources. Supporters of biofuel production argue that processing costs will decrease in direct proportion to rising volumes of production.

Both Brazil and the United States have viable biofuel production in the form of ethanol, in the case of Brazil derived from sugar cane, in the United States, produced from corn.

Ironically it is the very success of this production in the United States that will limit the near term growth of an alternative renewable fuels industry, because the ethanol lobby has ensured the farmers not only receive significant subsidies, but crop insurance as well, neither of which is available to other farmers wishing to dabble in the production of biofuel from camelina or other assorted feedstocks. These limitations exist despite the fact that the U.S. is the world leader in camelina research.

What is clear at this juncture however is the fact that renewable biojet fuels have been certified, and furthermore, that production is beginning, albeit at on a limited scale with relatively high production costs.

As noted earlier in this article, a critical momentum is building on three continents to advance production of biofuels, and when major players such as Airbus become involved, the viability of such projects is no longer in question, only the timeline.

Last but not least, an additional benefit of biofuels in a world concerned about global warming and emissions of greenhouse gases is that biofuels reduce carbon emissions by jet aircraft by up to 80 percent.

The technology is in place, the product has been certified, and at the end of the day, one is talking about an agricultural product which, depending on where it is sown, can produce one or even two harvests a year.

While discussion rages about the production of biofuels in poorer nations having the possibility of diverting land needed for food production, in terms of energies impact on the environment, biofuels are certainly more benign than other more traditional forms of energy as evidenced in the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill, or more recently, in the March nuclear debacle in Japan.

Biofuels are clean, green, and… for the moment, expensive.

Article by John C.K. Daly, appearing courtesy OilPrice.com.

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Investors looking for the next big thing after a hydrocarbon economy have a panoply of options, from solar to wind, as well as biofuels.

In terms of quickly ramping up production biofuels clearly win the race, but navigating the PR fluff and reality is not a simple thing.

The three main contenders for investor dollars are algae, jatropha and camelina. All have strengths and weaknesses, leaving investors to choose amongst them. Stripped of PR flummery, the only issue is where and when production can begin on a viable commercial scale. Investors who unravel the complexities of biofuel production and have cast-iron stomachs stand to profit, but biofuel production in the U.S, while having major players like Goldman Sachs and the Carlyle Group, are moving their chess pieces around a board already gamed by the major players.

While everyone agrees that biofuels are the future, investment is lagging.

But the interest is there. Fuel and oil comprise 25 percent of civilian airlines’ operating costs. When the price of jet fuel rises one cent, it increases the global cost of aviation $195 million.

Camelina as an additive is a “drop in” fuel – engines need no modification, and a series of Pentagon tests over the last two years have proven its feasibility as something to add to a 50 percent JP-8 blend. The Pentagon

So why, no U.S. production?

The answers are both complex and simple.

First, new biofuels are up against the well established ethanol lobby.

Secondly, given renewables’ battle against the ethanol Goliath, there are yet exist no subsidies, crop insurance or any other incentives to bring farmers on board to provide camelina feedstock, and farmers are hardly the most progressive green community.

Accordingly, U.S. companies such as Sustainable Oils face an uphill battle to sign up farmers, one by one.

But the technology exists, the product has been approved, most notably to fuel USAF C-17 Globemasters, as further Pentagon weapons testing continues.

Unfortunately for biofuel producers, the Pentagon only purchases fuel, and does not invest.

So, at the end of the day, the Pentagon role is passive – as for the civilian market, they are awaiting commercial volumes to be produced.

U.S. production to ramp up camelina derivatives is constrained by a lack of subsidies, crop insurance and record-high commodity prices for such alternatives as ethanol’s major feedstock, corn.

But camelina’s future as a civilian aircraft biofuel has been validated by the March announcement that a European consortium announced a project to produce Jet A-1 for civilian aircraft. European aircraft manufacturer Airbus and Romanian state-owned airline Tarom and a consortium of partners announced plans to establish a bio-fuel production center in Romania to manufacture fuel for the airline industry.

An American company is also proposing to produce biofuel in Uzbekistan.

So, the question is – how ironclad are investors’ stomachs? The question is no longer if biofuel will be produced – only where and when. Given that it is ultimately an agricultural product, sharp investors may see their profits expand before the end of a growing season.

Article by Dr John C.K. Daly, appearing courtesy OilPrice.com.

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The aviation industry has a significant impact (2%) on the global carbon footprint and it’s looking for ways to mitigate it with alternative fuels.

One of the latest news from this industry is that Honeywell successfully powered an Interjet Airbus A320-214 during a flight between Mexico City and Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas with its Honeywell Green Jet Fuel produced using the company’s UOP process technology. The fuel does not requires any aircraft or engine modifications.

The UOP process converted Mexican-sourced jatropha into fuel. One of the advantages of using this type of plant is that it is non-edible, although some have raised concerns about the plant’s sustainability and water demands.

The demonstration flight took place on Friday, April 1st and represented the culmination of the work carried out by Honeywell’s UOP, Interjet, Airbus, CFM International, the Government of the State of Chiapas and Auxiliary Services (ASA), an arm of Mexico’s Ministry of Communications and Transport. The Green Jet Fuel was blended with traditional petroleum-derived jet fuel to power one of the aircraft’s CFM56-5B4/3 engines manufactured by CFM International.

Process
The Green Jet Fuel process technology was originally developed in 2007 under a contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to produce renewable military jet fuel for the U.S. military. The process is based on hydroprocessing technology commonly used in today’s refineries to produce transportation fuels. In this process, hydrogen is added to remove oxygen from natural oils produced from sustainable feedstocks, including camelina, jatropha and algae.

The UOP process produces a Green Jet Fuel that is blended seamlessly with petroleum-based fuel. When used within as much as a 50 percent blend with petroleum-derived jet fuel, the blended fuel is a drop-in replacement that meets all of the critical specifications for flight, including a freeze point at -47 degrees Celsius and a flash point at 38 degrees Celsius.

UOP develops technology to convert petroleum feedstocks to fuels and chemicals and launched its Renewable Energy & Chemicals business in late 2006. Previous efforts include the UOP/Eni Ecofining process to produce Honeywell Green Diesel from biological feedstocks, which was commercialized in 2007. In 2008, UOP formed the joint venture Envergent Technologies LLC with Ensyn Corp. to offer pyrolysis technology for the production of renewable heat, power and transportation fuels.

The company says that previous demonstration flights showed that Honeywell Green Jet Fuel performed as well as traditional fuel in many key performance areas, even surpassing it in some cases.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, appearing courtesy Justmeans.

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At a meeting on May 6 in São Paulo, Brazil, industry stakeholders formed ABRABA to spearhead development of aviation biofuels. The effort signals a growing concern for the growth of the industry within a carbon and oil constrained future.

Earlier this month, aviation companies, biofuel producers, and the sugar cane, algae, and jatropha industries came together to form the Brazilian Aviation Biofuels Alliance (Aliança Brasileira para Biocombustíveis de Aviação, or ABRABA).  As the aviation industry continues to feel the crunch from rising fuel costs and price volatility, ABRABA represents the latest multi stakeholder effort to ramp up biofuel production in the commercial aviation sector (see CAAFI).

Among the aviation companies involved: Azul Líneas Aéreas Brasileñas, Embraer – Empresa Brasileña de Aeronáutica S.A., GOL Líneas Aéreas Inteligentes, TAM Líneas Aéreas, and TRIP Líneas Aéreas.  The Brazilian Association of Jatropha Producers (Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Pinhão Manso – ABPPM), the Sugar Cane Industry Union (UNICA), The Brazilian Aerospace Industries Association (AIAB), and the biotechnology companies Algae Biotecnología and Amyris Brasil join them.  The mission: “promote public and private initiatives to develop and certify sustainable biofuels for aviation,” reduce carbon emissions, and boost energy efficiency.

According to a statement released by the alliance, ABRABA argues:

The use of sustainable biofuels produced from biomass is key to maintaining the growth of the aviation industry within a low carbon economy.  The proven ability of Brazil to develop alternative energy sources, combined with its knowledge of aviation technologies, will result in a significant gain for the environment by minimizing the impact on economic development.

As is necessary with efforts of this complexity, the alliance will promote public and private stakeholder initiatives that seek to develop and certify sustainable biofuels for aviation.  The goal will be to spearhead favorable public policies that will lead to biofuels that are price competitive and achieve the same level of safety as petroleum derivatives.

The worldwide concern about climate change and oil supply uncertainty has led to a growing demand for renewable sources of energy.  The aviation sector has few options given its reliance on liquid forms of energy.  Further, emerging regulations around greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well as price uncertainty around fossil fuels, are driving investment in alternatives.

While civil aviation only produces around 2% of the world’s anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), increasing demand for fuel supplies threaten to impede growth in the aviation sector.  As demonstrated by the ABRABA alliance, the use of sustainable biofuels produced from biomass is a necessary precursor to sustained growth in the sector (see Aviation Boom in Asia Intensifies Global Competition for Fuel).

Brazil’s recognized capability for developing alternative energy sources, allied with its knowledge of aeronautical technology, put ABRABA in a favorable position to spearhead the development of aviation biofuels in the world economy.  Its success will depend in large part, however, on the availability of cheap sugar, which in a land and water constrained world, may be difficult to find as countries struggle to dedicate agricultural land to energy feedstock production.

For more information on the aviation sector’s pursuit of biofuels, check out Biomass Intel’s Aviation 2.0 section.

Camelina Aviation Biofuels: a Market Opportunity and Renewable Energy Report examines the market drivers behind the shift to biofuels in the aviation sector.

Mackinnon is Editor & Publisher of Biomass Intel, a law and policy resource for sustainable energy, and co-author of Camelina Aviation Biofuels: Market Opportunity and Renewable Energy Report.

photo: Todo-Juanjo

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The last several months have seen a flurry of activity in the aviation sector, as fuel price volatility and impending greenhouse gas regulations have goaded major airlines to ink deals for renewable jet fuel.

The latest involves British Airways, which struck a deal with Solena Group for 16 million gallons of jet fuel from waste.

The moves highlight the tremendous pressure airlines are under to keep costs low in an increasingly oil constrained world and regulated marketplace. During the last oil spike, fuel expenses, which historically ranged from 10 to 15 percent of US passenger airline operating costs, averaged more than 35 percent in the third quarter of 2008. According to news coming out of the International Air Transport Association, the marketplace for cheap fuel is about to get much more crowded.

Speaking in Singapore earlier this month, IATA director general and CEO Giovanni Bisignani reports that Asia-Pacific region has overtaken the US to become the world’s largest aviation market. According to AirCargo World, during the last decade, China replaced Japan as Asia-Pacific’s largest player. Today the country has an airline fleet of 1,400 aircraft compared to Japan’s 540.

Giovanni Bisignani notes, “The global air transport industry will triple in size when Asians travel as much as those in the U.S.”

The figure below from Boeing shows projected growth in the Asian-Pacific region:

As more of the world’s oil production is snapped up to meet growing Chinese and Indian oil demand as well as the needs of a growing Asia-Pacific aviation industry, the race is on for U.S.-based airlines to find alternative sources of jet fuel to offset petroleum price increases.

While feedstocks like algae, camelina, and jatropha derived renewable jet fuel show promise as a drop-in replacement, the industry finds itself having to compete with an EPA-mandated 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022 (see RFS2) for producers’ attention. With aviation accounting for only 12 percent of transportation fuel demand in the U.S., the auto transportation sector will maintain a distinct market advantage over aviation.

Mackinnon Lawrence is an attorney, principal consultant with Biomass Advisors, and editor & publisher of Biomass Intel.

photo: Gary Hayes

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“Sustainable development” has generated substantial buzz since the concept was brought into focus by the Brundtland Commission’s now famous 1987 report, Our Common Future. The Commission defined the concept as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Since then, the definition has been debated and adapted for specific purposes throughout policy, academic, governmental, and organizational circles. Many of these interpretations are only relevant to the circumstances in which they are applied. In the context of biomass and biofuels, sustainability standards are specific rules and criteria by which the production, transportation, and processing of feedstocks can be assessed for their environmental, social, and other values.

In the international community, sustainability guidelines for biomass have begun to emerge, but remain aspirational at best. While high oil prices, increasing pressures to mitigate climate change effects, and efforts to boost rural agricultural production throughout the world will continue to sustain support for the development of biomass and biofuel resources, environmental concerns will temper optimistic projections for the industry.

Even so, biomass and biofuels remain an important piece of the future energy puzzle and sustainability standards will go a long way towards preventing another “ethanol bubble” by encouraging the develpment of diversified feedstocks.

Differentiation in the marketplace — both among different feedstocks (i.e., corn versus soy versus jatropha) and between the same feedstock (i.e. sustainably and unsustainably produced corn) — can be accomplished through sustainability standards by, either:

1. Assisting consumers in judging whether given products are “environmentally friendly” and should be purchased or consumed (see Forest Stewardship Council), or
2. Encouraging the production of “environmentally friendly” biofuels and bioenergy, while discouraging the production of products that harm the environment or local communities (see Carbon Stewardship Council).

But not all sustainability standards are created equal, which raises concerns about the utility of certification schemes. As with climate change, developing and developed countries are divided on the issue, with developing countries arguing that certification schemes do not always tailor solutions to local conditions.

Uncertainty and conflicting schemes would hamper efforts to increase global trade in biomass feedstocks as the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development warns in its 2008 report, Making Certification Work for Sustainable Development: The Case of Biofuels, “the proliferation of individual standards may damage the efficacy and credibility of certification.”

International coordination on these goals would have three main benefits over individual systems: standardization, transparency, and wider participation. While an international standard is preferred, getting there is not particularly easy. Multilateral processes by their nature are slow, particularly in the United Nations. For an industry already bloodied by indirect land-use change and greenhouse gas accounting challenges, a heavily regulated certification scheme could scare potential investors away.

Below is a chart providing links to reports and information on some of the emerging standards:

Mackinnon Lawrence is an attorney, principal consultant with Biomass Advisors, and editor & publisher of Biomass Intel. Article appearing courtesy Biomass Intel.

photo: Songkran

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Biofuels – made from algae and non-food plants – are emerging as a potentially viable alternative to conventional jet fuels. Although big challenges remain, the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could be major.

Earlier this year, a Continental jet accelerated down the runway at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. Nothing out of the ordinary for Capt. Rich Jankowski, who countless times in his 38-year career had eased such two-engine Boeing 737-800s into the sky. Except on this experimental flight, one of the engines Jankowski relied on was burning fuel derived from microscopic algae to push the 45-ton aircraft into the air and keep it aloft — a first in aviation history.

Last year, Virgin Atlantic flew the first commercial jet on biofuels, a 40-minute jaunt between London and Amsterdam in which one engine burned a mix of 80 percent conventional jet fuel and 20 percent biofuel derived from coconuts and babassu nuts. Other test flights have followed, culminating in a 90-minute Japan Airlines flight with one engine burning a blend of biofuel from camelina — a weedy flower native to Europe — and regular jet fuel at the end of January.

As global economies strive to wean themselves off fossil fuels, one of the most daunting challenges is to find a replacement for the liquid fuels that power the world’s aircraft. Biofuels made from algae and non-food plants are now the leading contenders. While homes, cars, and offices can be powered by electricity produced from such renewable sources as solar, wind, and hydropower, there is little likelihood in the near future that battery power will be lifting a jumbo jet into the sky. And the global aviation industry uses an enormous amount of jet fuel — energy-dense kerosene — frequently referred to as Jet A or JP-8: The U.S. commercial airlines alone burn about 50 million gallons of jet fuel every day, at a cost of roughly $150 million.

That’s a lot of greenhouse gases, released right where they can do the most damage — high in the atmosphere. The warming properties of jet fuel exhaust are intensified at high altitude, where nitrogen oxides from the jet’s turbines react with other molecules in the upper atmosphere to increase levels of ozone, which traps heat, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The water vapor that forms contrails and other chemically active gases emitted during flight also contributes to climate change. Although the amount of emissions from aircraft compared with other vehicles is relatively small — roughly 3 percent of total worldwide greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning — the mix of compounds in jet emissions and their release in the upper troposphere intensifies their heat-trapping power.

The environmental appeal of biofuels — especially if they are produced from algae or other non-food sources — is strong. Preliminary results from an Air New Zealand test flight in December show that burning biofuels — in this case jet fuel refined from jatropha oil — can cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 percent compared to conventional fuel. And, as a bonus, about 1.4 metric tons of fuel could be saved on a 12-hour flight using a biofuel blend.

This month, the International Air Transport Association set a goal of achieving “carbon neutral growth” — meaning an increase in air travel would not emit any more CO2 than the present fleet and flight schedule — by 2020. The keys will be increasing fuel efficiency by 1.5 percent per year and using biofuel blends, according to IATA.

The overwhelming challenge is how to produce enough biofuel to supply even a fraction of the more than 60 billion gallons of jet fuel burned every year by the world’s aircraft. Relying heavily on biofuels made from food crops — such as soybeans, sugar cane, or canola — would not only affect food supplies and increase food prices, but would produce significant greenhouse gases during the planting and harvesting of these crops, as well as from forest clearing for more agricultural land. Non-food plant sources, such as jatropha and camelina, are promising, but difficult to produce in large quantities and can end up displacing food crops or lead to deforestation if the price of fuel rises high enough. Finally, making large amounts of jet fuel from algae represents a major hurdle, from perfecting the algae’s growth to extracting the oil cost-effectively.

Nevertheless, industry and government interest is driving research and testing into the development of biofuel-based jet fuels. Boeing has been conducting tests with various plant sources, including camelina. And the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force are working on the development of alternative fuel sources to free the military from its reliance on fossil fuels.

The bulk of the initial bio-jet fuel for test flights has come from jatropha — a poisonous shrub native to Central America — and camelina. Both plants produce oil-rich seeds. Terasol Energy — a company based in the U.S., India, and Brazil and the supplier of the oil for the Continental flight — can squeeze 242 gallons of jatropha oil per acre of farmland in India and Tanzania.

But jatropha and camelina have their own issues, such as the inevitable competition between crops grown for food and crops grown for fuel. The answer to that conundrum might be the microscopic plants known as algae. The tiny plants are not typically a food crop, are capable of producing 60 percent of body weight as oil under the right conditions, and can be grown in salt or wastewater, says David Daggett, Boeing’s technology leader for energy and emissions.

Algal oil can also be precisely tuned via genetic modification, or good old-fashioned breeding, to be the equivalent of crude oil. A host of companies, from San Diego-based Sapphire Energy to San Francisco-based Solazyme, are now experimenting with this potential fuel of the future.

Bio-jet fuels have delivered consistent high-quality results in ground tests and experimental flights. These fuels seem to have overcome the problems that their energy density might be too low (think ethanol versus gasoline) and that they could gel at the low temperatures found at high altitudes (think diesel on a cold day).

“All the characteristics are here to make it a very high quality fuel,” says Billy Glover, managing director of environmental strategy at Boeing. “The fuels we’re testing now have equal or better energy content than the Jet A requirements.”

Tim Zenk, vice president of corporate affairs at Sapphire Energy, said the company hopes to produce 300 barrels of oil from algae grown in brackish ponds at its test facility in New Mexico by 2011. In five years, the output should reach 10,000 barrels a day, costing between $60 and $80 dollars per barrel, he says, compared to more than $300 per barrel today for the algae industry as a whole.

Chemical engineers at the University of North Dakota’s Energy & Environmental Research Center have also successfully turned oil from canola, coconuts and soybeans into jet fuel that rivals the conventional liquid, U.S. government tests show. And facilities to refine such algal oil are already being built. UOP — a refinery business of Honeywell that processed the biofuels used in the Continental test flight — opened the first “ecofining” facility in Livorno, Italy, last year, with a capacity to eventually produce 100 million gallons of diesel fuel for ground vehicles. A Portuguese company, working with UOP, is building a second “ecofining” facility in Sines, Portugal.

“Going to biofuels doesn’t mean we have to make compromises,” says chemist Jennifer Holmgren, general manager of the renewable energy and chemicals business for UOP. “We are already making fuels that look exactly like the real thing, or better. The real limitation is going to be feedstock.”

Industry and the U.S. government are working on a solution to that problem, through a partnership dubbed the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI). As part of that group, the Federal Aviation Administration’s chief scientific and technical advisor, Lourdes Maurice, testified at a Congressional hearing in March that “we believe we have a path for achieving biofuel approvals at a 50 percent blend level over the next two years.”

She also argued that bio-jet fuels represent a unique opportunity within the transportation sector, because air travel relies completely on energy-dense liquid hydrocarbons distributed to a small number of locations. Supplying biofuel to just 35 major airports in the U.S. would cover 80 percent of all jet fuel use in this country, Maurice said.

Any of today’s biofuels produced in quantity would still have to be blended with jet fuel because they lack aromatics — the hydrocarbon rings common in petroleum-based jet fuel that interact with seals in engines, helping swell them shut. “We fully expect that the first fuels will be 50–50 blends or less,” Boeing’s Glover says.

But even such a blend would deliver significant climate benefits. According to Glover, camelina is a particularly promising biofuel source, with one camelina-jet fuel blend reducing carbon emissions by more than 80 percent. Such a blend would also not require any modifications to existing aircraft engines or infrastructure.

That was certainly the case for the FAA’s experimental flight of the Continental 737-800. Engine shutdowns at altitude did not phase the bio-jet fuel, nor did sudden accelerations and decelerations. By the time Jankowski brought the plane back down to Bush Intercontinental at 1:45 p.m., roughly two hours after takeoff, he had burned through some 3,600 pounds of the biofuel, slightly less than the 3,700 pounds of regular jet fuel in the other engine.

“The airplane performed perfectly,” he said at a press conference afterwards. “There were no problems. It was textbook.”

By David Biello, appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360.

[photo credit: Lee Jordon, Nguyen Dai, James Gagen, .jowo., jurvetson]

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