PASSGENGER BIOJET: KLM flew the first flight with passengers partially powered by jet fuel made from plants.
Image: KLM / Allard de Witte
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Dutch airline KLM has completed a fifth jet biofuel test flight—and the first with passengers other than flight crew. Using a 50–50 blend of regular jet fuel and biofuel refined from camelina oil in one of its four engines, the flight carried 42 "observers" for an hour on November 23 from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, enough to fill business class, according to chemist Jennifer Holmgren, who was on board.
"The civil aviation authority in the Netherlands said we've seen enough of this fuel that I'm comfortable putting people on it," says Holmgren, who works for refiner UOP, a division of Honeywell International. "We went from people saying we couldn't do this three years ago, to making a drop-in sustainable aviation fuel today."
The test flights are part of an aviation industry plan to derive 1 percent of jet fuel from petroleum alternatives by 2015, or roughly 600 million gallons a year. Already, biofuel producers are gearing up production. Camelina grower Sustainable Oils—which provided the camelina oil to make the 1,000 gallons of jet fuel needed for the KLM flight—plans to cover more than 20,000 hectares in Montana with the weedy relative of canola, enough to deliver some 9.5 million liters of raw oil. And algae grower Solazyme recently won a contract to supply more than 75,500 liters of fuel derived from algae oil to the U.S. Navy, which would be a first for the industry.
Testing and certification procedures under American Society for Testing and Materials International (ASTM) are underway, as well, with the jet biofuel to be included under the specification for synthetic paraffinic (waxy) kerosenes approved earlier this year for alternative fuels derived from coal. "It's been in practice for 15 years in South Africa, this is not new," notes Darrin Morgan, director of sustainable biofuels strategy at Boeing. "We expect that whole process [of certification] to be done sometime in 2010."
That does not mean airlines will be flying on half and half blends of bio-based and conventional jet fuel as soon as next year, however, largely because there will not be much of the mixture available, even if it is certified by ASTM and, ultimately, the Federal Aviation Administration. Large-scale refining of such bio-based oil has yet to result in any dedicated facilities. Instead, batches for such test flights or military contracts are processed over months individually by UOP at a Houston facility.
"We've made 40,000 gallons," Holmgren says, and notes that existing refineries can be modified to make the fuel. "We're modifying the facility further to improve the throughput." That's because the core of making jet biofuel is much the same as the core of making conventional fuel: hydroprocessing, or the adding of hydrogen to existing hydrocarbons in order to remove oxygen and other impurities as well as build the right molecule. All the bio-version lacks are the aromatics—specific volatile hydrocarbon rings that are necessary to swell shut seals within current aircraft engines, hence the need to blend it with conventional fuel.
But for biofuels to really take flight—or at least achieve the global aviation fuel use goal of at least 1 percent—a minimum of five facilities capable of churning out 100 million gallons or more would have to be built.
"Building a plant is a couple of years out," Holmgren says. "Three to five years is a reasonable time frame."
There is also ongoing controversy surrounding some of the plants used to make the jet biofuel, which include not only camelina and algae but also Jatropha, among others. Jatropha, for example, largely grown in East Africa and India to date, has proved to require more water than initially anticipated, a problem in areas where fresh water is a scarce resource. But Boeing's Morgan argues that Jatropha can make sense where fresh water is ubiquitous and a problem for soil erosion, such as Madagascar and Haiti. "If Jatropha is consuming a lot of water, that's exactly what you want it to do because that prevents further soil erosion," he says, noting that a "best practices" lifecycle analysis for Jatropha will be available from Yale University in 2010, along with a study of halophytes—plants that can tolerate salt, which have not been used to make biofuel to date. "It's fact finding for what are the best ways to do these things."
A similar study by Michigan Technological University sponsored by UOP found that jet biofuel from camelina could reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by as much as 84 percent and be grown in rotation with wheat crops. Of course, fuels from such sources also cost more than conventional jet fuel. "It's safe to say 50 cents to a dollar per gallon for the processing step, including transportation," Morgan says. "That's not in the future, that's now. It's just a matter of getting those plants going."
He adds: "As soon as it's certified, I wouldn't be surprised if people and airlines want to fly on it."
The first group to explore producing jet biofuel from such a facility was also announced by KLM after the flight last week—SkyEnergy will be a joint venture for the Dutch airline with North Sea Petroleum and Spring Associates. "This is a path to commercialization," Holmgren says, "which is what all these test flights have been about."
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11 Comments
Add CommentAssuming "BioJet-A" can be made from non-food sources at a carbon/energy cost less than petroleum fuels. (That's a BIG assumption.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven then, commercial jets would still transport vast amounts of CO2 and H2O to the stratosphere where it will remain for long periods contributing significantly to global warming. BioFuel is not a "get out of jail free" card for the airlines.
Even weeds relative of canola requires surface water and fertilizer. In this area you could grow grain for starving people. What nonsense, these biofuels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been a farmer and an inventor /scientist for nearly 60 years. Things like this is great fun on someone else's dime.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing farmland to grow fuel if you do not have to is stupid and costly. Been there, done that. Haven't the Greenies discovered this yet? You can make liquid fuel out of almost anything if money is no object. This has been known for 80 years, nothing new there.
Put this one firmly in the category of WHO CARES?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the most uninteresting and meaningless story I can imagine. Use oil for jet fuel and use whatever biofuel is available in terrestrial vehicles. Same effect but no heroic efforts to make biofuel suitable for aviation. Biofuels are mostly a bad idea anyway.
Aside from the remarks above, it is kind of stupid to hide half the text behind an advertisement with the close button hidden behind an other advertisement. I understand the need for some advertisements, but your site is being overrun by ads and pop-ups and I won't be visiting it any more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo people will starve in the world (acreage used for biofuel), but the elite will be able to continue jet setting around the globe. It is a fine, brave, new world we are entering.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWouldn't it be easier to just throw the fraudsters in jail?
jatropha+hype+waterfootprint-Did you check out Ruud van Eck+Julius Nambua of Diligent Tanzania LTD?= ruud.van.eck@diligent.nl Thank you and regards
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJohan Schiphorst
Twitter.com ref: @ajschiphorst
In France, all fossil hydrocarbons are taxed (the TIPP) at the pump, except aviation fuel. It is high time kerosene were taxed equitably.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfolks above are missing the point: this isn't about using existing cultivated cropland. Its about optmizing utilization of degraded and fallow lands and creating economic opportunity, especially in developing nations, and doing so using good science. All in order to take economic pressure off the remaining native ecosystems by creating economic value from degraded land that would otherwise force local populations to further deforest and degrade to make temporary farmland. The issue is far more complex than the simple minded comments above. Suggest that those saying such things do their homework first.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake a look at a satellite picture of Madagascar or Haiti or much of Amazonia: you'll see massive deforestation (Not for biofuels, mostly for the timber and to grow food crops). The left behind degraded lands won't support traditional "green revolution" agriculture, so people in those places have engaged in a vicious cycle of chop forest, denude soil from traditional food crops, then move on to the next parcel and repeat. To slow or stop this invirtuous circle, economic value needs to be created from that degraded land. Enter next generations of biofuels that don't require the nutrient, water, fertilizer inputs that bad ideas like corn ethanol require.
Per Food or fuel: the reason the developing world is starving has nothing to do with shortage of food--it has to do with market access to supplies of food (not the lack of it) as well as the ability of developing world farmers to compete with massively subsidized developed world farmers. Datapoint: the price of a gallon of diesel in sub saharan africa can top $10/ gallon. That reality means africa's poor are completely shut out of any, even minor, mechanization. As a result: there is large amounts of land in africa that can be used for food production, but aren't. Its a lack of an affordable fuel to enable farming in africa to compete with developed world welfare farmers (get oil subsidized, get free money from govt in so many forms its comical).
It is the height of arrogance, ignorance, and hypocrisy for developed world people (especially farmers) to run around and criticize one of the more promising ways that the developing world has to provide local energy for itself.
Aviation is already playing a role in helping drive those local, developing world markets, while also creating a valuable cash-export opportunity for places that in some cases desparately need it.
Shame on people that use un informed observations to undermine such an efforts.
In reading the Jules Verne (from the earth to the moon ) He used a super gun to propell them . I was wondering if it would be practicle for us to use a magnetic rail gun that gently goes up the slope of a moutain with its rail ,something like pikes peak or one in Hawaii or Africa. But don't let it accellerate so fast as to flatten us on the way up but go fast enough to attain low earth orbit where it could catch a cable hung from a geosyncronous satelite to pull or push it to a higher level That way the cable would not drag in the earths atmosphere and the capsules ,something like Bert Rutans plane that won the Kramer prize could flutter back to earth when empty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this..///?/
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