Boeing has tested two such "vegetable-based biofuels" with this antifreezing property in the General Electric jet engines used on many of its 747 aircraft, Daggett says. Virgin Atlantic airline announced that early this year it will conduct the first flight test of a biodiesel–petroleum diesel blend in one of the four engines of a 747 aircraft; Air New Zealand is planning a similar test flight on a Rolls Royce engine in one of its 747s later in the year.
The first UOP-derived ecofining facility, capable of producing 100 million gallons of diesel fuel for ground vehicles, is now being built in Livorno, Italy; a second facility is set to be constructed in Sines, Portugal. "Going to biofuels doesn't mean we have to make compromises. We are already making fuels that look exactly like the real thing, or better," says Jennifer Holmgren, UOP's director of renewable energy chemicals. "The real limitation is going to be feedstock."
There is not enough oil from plants such as soy and canola to supply even a fraction of the 60 million–plus gallons of jet fuel burned every day by U.S. aircraft, nearly one quarter of global use, even if all such sources were converted to fuel (which would significantly impact food supplies.) And Boeing has had a hard time finding biofuel suppliers who can produce testable quantities of their product. "Immediately that weeds out a lot of companies when you ask for 1,000 gallons," Daggett says.
As a result, both private companies like UOP, government agencies like DARPA and commercial organizations such as CAAFI have begun to consider a broader array of sources, including the oil from the seeds of Brazil's babassu palm tree or the conversion of the woody or cellulosic parts of plants. Chemical engineer Charles Wyman of the University of California, Riverside, argues for biorefineries turning seed oil, the stalks and other detritus of crop plants, and even wood pulp waste into an assortment of alternative fuels.
"You are growing wood or grasses in a renewable way in some sort of energy plantation to produce biomass," he says. "Convert some of that to ethanol, and the fraction you can't convert, use Fischer-Tropsch to make diesel fuel that could be tailored towards jet fuel."
Or algae could be grown. The tiny plant can produce "60 percent of its weight as oil under stress," according to Wyman. Closed vats might produce pure strains of such high-oil species for feeding into large ponds to grow sufficient supplies, says systems engineer Ron Pate at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, who has been analyzing the fuel potential of microscopic plants.
Such vast algae farms might also subsist on so-called "impaired" water, either salty ocean or polluted waters, Pate says. "Water coming out of sewage treatment plants has nutrients—nitrates, which encourage algae to grow," Boeing's Daggett notes. "You can harvest the algae and extract the oil, then release the water in a cleaner state than what it would have been leaving the sewage plant."
But biorefineries would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and require significant upgrades in existing processes, whereas such algae schemes have yet to be tried. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has provided the money for a few pilot biorefineries and DARPA has provided funding for initial efforts to begin exploring algae's feasibility, but it will be years before any such fuel is widely available. "Ten to 20 years is a reasonable time frame," Daggett says.
See what we're tweeting about
7 Comments
Add CommentPerhaps a bit friendlier, but certainly not good for the climate. (1) The fuel is still about 1/2 fossil. (2) Contrails are bad.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery true Robert, as I note in the story. The key will be developing some kind of closed loop biorefinery system. But let's face it. The Air Force's goal is focused first and foremost on domestic sourcing and only secondarily on environmental benefit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd the airlines are just looking for cheap.
If contrails are an issue, and I think they are. Perhaps we should also be concerned about passenger mile per lb of H2O in the jet's exhaust. Perhaps this synthetic fuel is better in that regard. If it is not then perhaps the synthetic fuel should be used at ground level and continue to use conventional fuel in the jets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFly with hydrogen from Aluminum. The aluminum is regenerated by electricity:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.instructables.com/id/SODA-CAN-HYDROGEN-GENERATOR/
Bring back dirigibles filled with helium. The Hindenberg was luxury liner after all. They can be designed more aerodynamically aand given enough motor power to go pretty fast and much less energy use. And less noise. And less room for runways, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTank water in the aircraft. Water does not burn. Water is the new fuel for the airlineindustry. Lead water through pipes to the engines. At the the jet engine before injection into jetstreamchamber where the air is compressed and hot, split before injection the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The inject the oxygen and water mix into hot compressed chamber of a jet engine. There it ignites and expand a lot like jet fuel. Water is a unlimited resource. It is cheap to exept in deserts by why not plan airports appropiate distance from waterresources. This way we could power any cars, busses, trains, ships, boats, bikes, aeroplanes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is another solution too. That you ignite mixture of the oxygen and hydroxen without compressed air and let the expanded gas(water) thrust a jetturbine, use ax to transmit force.
Third solution spilt water in engine let oxygen out, let hydrogen react with hot and compressed air in jetengine.
The thing is to find a way to split water suffiently fast enought.
The spaces ferries of NASA has engine-thrust from hydrogen.
"[Brazil] has weaned itself from foreign oil by embracing ethanol domestically produced from sugarcane."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSugar cane ethanol is a fraction of Brazil's oil independence (~12% of Brazil's energy needs), much more of the credit goes to Petrobras for becoming better at extracting and refining oil (~88%).
Brazil produces the oil equivalent of about 300,000 barrels per day of sugar cane ethanol, and its total oil consumption (according to the Energy Information Administration) is 2,500,000 barrels per day. Petrobras produces about 2,400,000 barrels per day of oil. In other words, 88% of Brazil's energy needs come from oil.