Biofuel for Airplanes? Perhaps Sooner than We Think.
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01.17.07
Who knows what will jump out and save us from running out of fuel and keep the airplanes flying. According to a website on Flight, "A NASA scientist is confident that within five years commercial aircraft could be powered using a type of biofuel derived from saltwater plants, or halophytes, grown in desert areas and irrigated using sea water. While the concept may sound far-fetched, engine manufacturer General Electric says it is following developments in this area "with interest", and a major oil company, which prefers to remain anonymous, says it is considering the idea to see how much benefit it has. Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, says 22 countries are carrying out small experimental activities into the cultivation of halophytes for use in food production, although he admits "nobody is doing this type of biomass for aircraft" at this time. Nevertheless, Bushnell sees "no stoppers" to augmenting halophyte-derived biomass to produce biofuels capable of powering aircraft."
The neat thing about halophytes is "that saltwater plants are not dependent on fresh water, which is in increasingly short supply, and can instead be irrigated using plentiful sea water supplies. Bushnell notes that, following irrigation, the salt from the sea water "should leach back into the ocean" without causing problems to agriculture.
Suitable areas around the world for cultivating halophytes include the Sahara desert, Western Australia, south-west USA, parts of the Middle East and parts of Peru. Scientists claim that an area smaller than the Sahara desert could yield enough biomass to replace the world's fossil fuel requirements."
Furthering the case for halophyte production, Bushnell says that, as these plants are grown in the desert, they will produce a cooler, wetter land surface, which could lead to rainfall in areas of the world where rainwater is in short supply.
GE Aviation manager of advanced combustor engineering Timothy Held believes some progress can be made within five years on testing biofuels derived from halophytes for use in commercial aircraft engines, but he says that the entire process of developing and producing the fuel will take longer. "It seems plausible that some amount of suitable fuel could be made available for testing purposes in the five-year timeframe," he says.
"However, the steps of establishing suitability for use in flight gas turbines, obtaining approval from the engine manufacturers, incorporation of the new fuel into a specification and developing large-scale production capacity are quite time-consuming," Held says. While biodiesel has been used by GE to operate marine gas turbines, it is not suitable for aircraft engines because of its poor low-temperature properties, but he believes a fuel derived from bio-oil by conversion to a paraffin-based product has a significant chance of becoming a viable aviation fuel.
NASA's Bushnell believes the argument in favour of biofuels for aviation is being reinvigorated by "the incipient demise of cheap oil" and increasing evidence of global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels. "This is the only easy solution I know of, both in terms of economics and timescale, and we do not need major capital investments to do this. It is definitely worth a serious look," he says. ::FlightGlobal via ::ecosherpa
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Isreal has been experimenting with this for years and has a large area of already salt damaged land near the ocean which was a logical site. Isreali genetic engineers have had 2000 acres of land experimenting with salinated land agricuture, both for bio fuels but also for fueal production. Recent research has been to find the most suitable plant matter for biofuel production, as well as plant types which can provide large scale biomass for animal feed. Recent trials have developed a two stage biomass method which provides a biomass fuel, a by product animal feed, as a significant amount of clean, desalinated drinking quality water. It is odd they they did not metion this in the article.
wait now i'm totally confused... worldchanging is now posting lite fodder like high fashion recycled denim and fair trade shoes, while treehugger is posting hard science stories about major research and halophytes as the next major biofuel feedstock?
heh, well i was sad when worldchanging "upgraded" their site and made it look more like treehugger (not that theres anything wrong with that! i just felt like it lost a bit of its own soul), started noticing a watering down of their content... but it looks you you guys of all blog teams are picking up the slack!
excellent.
Very interesting stuff. Hope you keep us up on developments. Thanks for this info.
I heard this story recently, GE was mentioned as well as aviation fuel, but the difference seems to be that captured "emission CO2" and rest warmth from powerplants were to be used to create this. Major difference there is that there is less need for full frontal sun, a thing we don't have too much over here!
But there sure are a lot of developments to create "new" fossile fuels; seems to me more money is poured into that field then in low-power alternatives for household and electric appliances. In the home area many are switching to large plasma TV-sets, which are heavy on the power.
Boeing PDF on the subject...
http://www.trbav030.org/pdf2006/265_Dagget.pdf
This whole 40% bio fuel plant could really help but it is only a temporary solution... what about when the plants die out cuz we took them for our own selfish needs ?
What then?
This company in El Paso, Texas is just weeks away from proving their their estimates of output are correct. They are talking about 100,000 gallons of fuel produced per acre per year. This quantity far exceeds any other estimates I've read about in biofuel production. I believe their process makes so much sense that every effort should be made to promote their methods with every company I can find that is looking into the change from fossil fuels to biofuels.
Please view all the videos and materials provided below.
Company:Valcent, El Paso, TX - Watch video on page
http://www.valcent.net/s/Ecotech.asp...
CNN Report on Valcent:UTube Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch...
Local Texas TV Report:UTube Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch...
Contacts: info@valcent.net
Valcent Products Inc.