New Zealand Airliner Runs on Veggie Oil

A New Zealand airliner successfully completed a two-hour test flight while running partly on vegetable oil. One of the engines of the Boeing 747-400 ran on a 50/50 mix of jet fuel and a biofuel created from the oil of jatropha plants.

In this article on MSNBC, Air New Zealand Chief Executive Rob Fyfe called the flight “a milestone for the airline and commercial aviation.”

“Today we stand at the earliest stages of sustainable fuel development and an important moment in aviation history,” he said shortly after the flight. The company’s goal is to become the world’s most environmentally sustainable airline.

The use of jatropha oil just may be the sustainable break the airline industry is looking for. Until now, biofuels were thought to be incapable of powering flight because they freeze at high altitudes. Jatropha oil, however, has an even lower freezing point than jet fuel, making it ideal for aviation. In addition, jatropha oil doesn’t compete with a food source or drive food prices up like ethanol. And while it does release carbon, living jatropha plants on the ground would absorb half of that carbon.

All in all, using this particular biofuel would reduce the carbon footprint of the aviation industry by one quarter.

“Ethanol is a first generation biofuel; jatropha a second generation biofuel that doesn’t compete for land with food production,” Mills said.

As with anything new, there are plenty of questions that still need to be answered: Is it really sustainable on a large scale? When will it be available for widespread use?

Mills said it will be a few years before New Zealand airliners (or any other airliners) will have access to significant quantities of jatropha oil. Mills said it would be at least 2013 before they could ensure a bountiful fuel crop, but he hopes by then that 10% of his fleet is running (at least partially) on jatropha biofuel.

That’s progress.