It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to traditional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods items.

jatropha curcas is a genus of around 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 finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to bring out research study and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic specialists for the task.

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

One truly motivating advancement has been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thereby avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to please another person's green qualifications.