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It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to various kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

Jatropha is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the state Research Support Foundation transferred to carry out research and advancement into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the job.

The most recent airline to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights utilizing a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is claimed, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One actually motivating advancement has been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers consequently preventing a cost spiral. Not so long back, a surge in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing undoubtedly if some individuals wound up starving just to please another person's green qualifications.