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

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

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

jatropha curcas is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research relocated to perform research and advancement into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical consultants for the task.

The latest airline to start try out brand-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 mix, it is claimed, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging development has actually been the move away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers therefore preventing a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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