The search for an environmentally friendly fuel for airplanes took a leap forward today with the world’s first flight powered by a second-generation biofuel, derived from plants that do not compete with food crops.

An Air New Zealand jumbo jet left Auckland just before midnight GMT with a 50-50 mix of jet fuel and oil from jatropha trees in one of its four engines. The two-hour test flight, which took the Boeing 747 over the Hauraki Gulf, showed that the jatropha biofuel was suitable for use in airplanes without the need for any modifications of the engines. It forms part of the airline’s plan to source 10% of its fuel from sustainable sources by 2013.

“At an emotional level, it was an exciting day today,” said Air New Zealand’s chief pilot, David Morgan, who was on the test flight. “We achieved everything we wanted to achieve and it as a significant milestone for the aviation industry, doing the very first jatropha-fuelled flight. We’re thrilled.”

The flight was completed as the US airline Continental announced its own plans to test second-generation biofuels: next week it will fly a plane over the Gulf of Mexico with fuel derived from algae.

Air travel contributes 3% of global carbon dioxide emissions, and is one of the fastest rising contributors to climate change, but the search for a greener alternative to kerosene jet fuel has been problematic. Airlines cannot use standard first-generation biofuels such as ethanol because these would freeze at high altitude. In addition, environmentalists argue that manufacturing biofuels can produce more emissions than they absorb when growing, and can also displace agricultural crops and push up the price of food.

Air New Zealand’s biofuel was made from jatropha nuts, which are up to 40% oil, harvested from trees grown on marginal land in India, Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania. The fuel was pre-tested to show that it was suitable for airplanes, freezing at -47C and burning at 38C.

The flight included a series of tests to assess how the biofuel-powered engine operated compared to the ones running on kerosene at different speeds and at different stages of a normal flight. “The flight was notable for the lack of any surprises ¨C everything ran normally and as expected,” said Morgan. “The fuel was indistinguishable from jet A1, a true drop-in fuel. You could not see a difference in the four engines.”

Continental’s forthcoming demonstration flight will use a mixture of jatropha-derived biofuel and fuel made from algae, supplied by the San Diego company Sapphire Energy, seen as leaders in the search to make useful oil from micro-organisms. In the first commercial test flight of biofuels in the US, one of the engines on a Boeing 737-800 will be filled with a 50-50 mix of biofuel and traditional jet fuel.

“One of the reasons we chose algae and jatropha is that both are not food sources and can be grown in arid regions and virtually anywhere,” said Leah Rayne, managing director of global affairs at Continental. “So they do not compete with food crops for water.”

She added that, although the jatropha and algae fuels did not require any modifications to current aircraft engines, it would take several years of test flights for the biofuels to be certified for general use by airlines.

Robin Oakley, head of Greenpeace UK’s climate change campaign, warned against overinterpreting the results of the test flights. When Air New Zealand announced its biofuel plans in November, he said: “We need a dose of realism here, because this test flight does not mean an end to the use of kerosene in jet engines. The amount of jatropha that would be needed to power the world’s entire aviation sector cannot be produced in anything like a sustainable way, and even if large volumes could be grown, planes are an incredibly wasteful way of using it.” Environmentalists argue that curbing flights is the only true solution.

The Air New Zealand and Continental planes are not the first to use biofuels: in February, Virgin Atlantic successfully tried a mixture of 80% jet fuel and 20% biofuel - made from coconut oil and babassu palm oil - in one engine of a Boeing 747 on a flight between London and Amsterdam.

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Enter Jatropha. This small shrub-like plant may be the answer. It is a hardy plant and its seeds produce more oil than the same amount of soybeans or corn, and the oil does not need extensive or pricy processing to make it into biodiesel. And, its seeds are toxic to animals and humans which means that fueling a car will not leave a family hungry.

So, if Jatropha is such an ideal alternative source for energy, why are Indian farmers not aggressively planting Jatropha as contract farmers? Bioenergy Plantations Pte Ltd wanted to uncover the reasons as part of its research into the viability of growing Jatropha for biodiesel. It found two key reasons that farmers chose other plants over Jatropha.

The first reason is crop-land diversion. While Jatropha cannot be eaten, it is grown in soil that could be used for food-based agriculture. And, if a farmer is a food producer, that crop-land is valuable to their livelihood only if it grows edible products. So, given the choice between Jatropha and an edible crop, the farmer would choose the latter.

The second reason is the cost of the agricultural process. From planting through harvesting to processing, a farmer may have one or two familiar and affordable logistical methods for food-based products. However, a Jatropha planting requires different (and perhaps unusual) methodology throughout growth, harvesting, and processing. While not particularly costly, the addition of equipment or procedures on the scale of a typical farm does create an additional (and seemingly unnecessary) expenditure. So, given the choice between Jatropha and a crop that doesn’t seem to cost to produce, the farmer would choose the latter.

Because of these two reasons, Indian farmers have tried and rejected Jatropha as an option for their farms. As such, contract farming of Jatropha is not an option for a viable production of Jatropha biodiesel. A solution would need to plant Jatropha plants in land that is not dedicated to food-based crops and would need to have an economy of scale that enabled production efficiently and affordably.

Managed plantations fit the bill and therefore are a likely alternative and Bioenergy Plantations investigated this possibility and found a vastly different result. When corporations acquire tracts of land and develop them specifically for large-scale Jatropha production, the issues are solved: Land-use becomes a non-issue because the land is not already set-aside for food-based crops, and the economies of scale enable affordable production.

Further field-work has shown that farmers and their families support managed plantations as laborers much more readily than adopting Jatropha on their own farms.

Bioenergy Plantations concludes that only companies utilizing the Managed Plantation model and building sustainable corporations to support Jatropha projects will successfully drive the cost of Jatropha oil below $20 per barrel.

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For the same reason Jatropha is not cultivated as a food crop. Jatropha actually qualifies as an energy source in developing countries, because there is no competition with local food markets.

The Jatropha curcas L. variety has been tested as an energy source in a number of development projects and research programs since the early nineties, and it has shown very positive results.

Jatropha curcas L. produces seeds with an oil content of 30-50%. The Jatropha oil can be combusted as fuel without being refined. Jatropha oil burns with a clear, smoke-free flame. Within a development project conducted by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) in Mali Jatropha oil has been successfully tested as fuel for simple Diesel-engines with precombustion-chamber used in agricultural production for mills and water pumps. The esterification with methanol or ethanol then produces biodiesel (methyl- or ethyl-ester) which can be used for Diesel-engines in ordinary vehicles.

For the past two years Bioenergy Plantations (BEP) has done extensive research in studying the growth of the Jatropha plant in tropical areas of India without irrigation. Bioenergy Plantations research and development center has been testing different lines and varieties of Jatropha plants. Bioenergy Plantations has also been measuring germination percentages and Jatropha oil content from several different varieties of Jatropha seeds.

The Jatropha tree uses are many and range from non-edible Jatropha oil production to soap production to pharmaceutical production.

COMMON USES OF THE JATROPHA PLANT ARE:

The life span of Jatropha curcas L. is about 40 years. For this reason Bioenergy Plantations (BEP) is very positive in promoting Jatropha oil as an alternative to soy bean oil, palm oil or any edible vegetable oil being used as a feedstock to produce biodiesel. Last but not least, Jatropha can grow on wastelands, in rural areas without any irrigation and management.

It is without question the green fuel of the future.

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