The fourth airline to successfully test fly biofuel for their jet engines is JAL – Japan Airlines who successfully conducted a one-hour 747-300 flight test using a B50 blend of camelina, jatropha and algae based biofuel in the number 3 engine.
Amongst all the biofuels the algae oil was supplied by Sapphire Energy, although at less than 1% in total it shows the huge potential for algae fuel as a replacement for jet fuel. Compared to the other fuels tested in the test flight (jatropha and camelina) algae does not use up land to grow the fuel feedstock, therefore not impacting land use which could be used for farming and food production.
The ground tests went on to show that the biofuel was much more effecient than the standard aviation fuel jet-A kerosene, which was consistent with the findings of another airline test run – that of Continental Airlines.
Tony Piccolo – Aquatic Biofuels Specialist, Rome-Italy
Aquatic Biofuel Specialist
