Air New Zealand’s Biofuel Flight Cuts Emissions By 65%
At the Eco-Aviation Conference in Washington, Air New Zealand’s Chief Pilot Captain David Morgan announced the company’s findings on a test flight from last December. Powered by a combination of biofuel and jet fuel, the test resulted in a fuel savings of 1.2%. It also cut CO2 emissions by over 60%!
While a 1.2% fuel savings doesn’t seem like much, that is over 1 ton of fuel!
The test was conducted using a commercial 747-400 fitted with Rolls Royce engines. Rolls Royce had certified the fuel — a 50:50 blend of standard Jet A1 fuel and synthetic paraffinic kerosene derived from jatropha oil.
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“We’ve proven the technical capability of biofuel as a drop-in replacement,” said Bill Glover, Managing Director of Environmental Strategy for Boeing. “It meets all jet fuel requirements and then some.”
The biofuel was produced from Jatropha seeds grown on “environmentally sustainable farms.” A second generation biofuel, jatropha is grown on land that doesn’t compete with food. It requires almost no care and very little water. Another major benefit of jatropha is that, due to its ability to take hold in harsh wastelands, it can be used to help stop erosion in these areas and reclaim them for agricultural production.
The test was a joint initiative between Air New Zealand, Boeing, Rolls-Royce and Honeywell’s UOP. And it has demonstrated that more sustainable air travel can be achieved by refiners, airframe manufacturers, engine makers and airlines working together.
“Certainly the data from our biofuel test flight will be a critical component towards helping biofuel become a certified aviation fuel,” Captain David Morgan said.
The biofuel offers some performance improvements over Jet A1 due to its higher net heat of combustion including:
- The fuel burn for a twelve-hour flight would save 1.43 tons of fuel.
- A savings of approximately 4.5 tons of CO2.
- An estimated 60-65% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The report was prepared by Air New Zealand, Boeing and Rolls-Royce. This material now needs to be submitted to the rigorous industry evaluation and approval protocol to enable it to be certified for everyday use.
“We currently have a team looking at several different biofuel options. We remain committed to our ambition of having 10% of our fuel needs by 2013 met by alternative fuels, but appreciate there are many more steps to be taken by experts in other areas to deliver biofuel as a commercial aviation fuel source,” he says.
But price is another factor for using such fuels.
“At the moment these feed stocks … are still facing the challenge of reaching cost competitiveness with conventional jet fuel,” particularly when the price of oil is around $60 a barrel, Andrew Herdman, director general of the Asia Pacific Airlines Association, told The Associated Press.
If you’re interested in some porn on jatropha biofuels:
Source: Air New Zealand
Interesting story, but why did GAS 2.0 completely ignore the fact that the United States Air Force has been using this fuel for several years now, and has certified B-52s, F-15s, B1-Bs and some cargo aircraft for use with what is essentially the same fuel. The USAF is on track to have all of its aircraft certified for use of this fuel by the end of 2012.
The USAF is mixing USAF JP8 and synthetic paraffinic kerosene. Rolls Royce suggested this to commercial carriers after it was proven by the USAF. The differences between JP-8 and Jet-A is minimal.
If GAS 2.0 is really looking for “green” success stories, this should have been covered. The only reason to have NOT covered it is that GAS 2.0 is not a “Green” publication, but is instead an “anti-establishment” publication. Which is it?
You can get complete information from Air Force Magazine, and they’ll probably get you current and complete information.
Write to Michael M. Dunn at
I am confused about the 60% reduction in CO2. If they had somehow made the jet fly on half as much jet fuel, then wouldn’t that have resulted in a 50% reduction in CO2? But of course there is the new biofuel also. Since we are now at a reported 60% reduction, does this mean the burning of the biofuel is scrubbing some CO2 out? This makes no sense to me. How is this 60% calculated? Is there some place I can go that shows the overall chemical reactions of reactants to products? To get 60% CO2 reduction the biofuel would have to be essentially carbon free, nearly pure hydrogen (or some other fuel). Or does the 60% refer to fossil fuels and the net CO2 cycle. If this is the case I would say the article is more than a bit misleading.
Good posts. Considering we waste about 40% of our crop, more than 50% pollution reduction for airplane really makes sense. Hopefully this will yet another trigger to go into that direction.
We also wonder if bio-fuel could play a role for collectible cars that cannot be converted to the electric drive. It might be the answer as to what will happen to these cars.
The Electricnick.com team.
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