It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to traditional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of 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 plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and development into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic consultants for the task.

The most current airline to start try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging advancement has been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers therefore avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a combined blessing certainly if some people wound up starving simply to satisfy another person's green qualifications.