Interesting article from Baltimore Sun: (if MBT maked the Jatropha fee work, it is on a winner)
baltimoresun.com Seeds of biofuel about to take off, fueling jumbo jet By Peter Pae
June 15, 2008
KUNIA, Hawaii
If all goes well this summer, an Air New Zealand jumbo jet will take off from Auckland this fall powered by fuel refined from the seed of a fast-growing weed.
The three-hour test flight of the Boeing 747 could mark one of the more promising - and more unusual - steps by the airline industry to find cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternatives to fossil fuel.
"We're confident that the test will go well," said David Morgan, Air New Zealand's general manager for airline operations, before leading visitors to a farm here where the weeds are being researched.
If the flight is successful, he said, "It'll be a real milestone not only for Air New Zealand but for aviation."
The secret: oil from poisonous seeds of the jatropha tree, which grows in warm climates.
For the past year, scientists here have been perfecting a process for turning the oil into jet fuel. Last week, the airline announced plans to use this new fuel for 10 percent of its needs by 2013.
The jatropha-refined fuel is significantly cheaper than crude oil. It could cost an estimated $43 a barrel, or about one-third the cost of a barrel of crude oil.
The test flight is particularly noteworthy because it will come at a time when ethanol and other biofuels have come under increasing scrutiny because of their side effects.
Production of ethanol has been blamed for corn shortages that have contributed to higher food prices.
Others have been blamed for deforestation and contributing to global warming.
The test also will come as record fuel prices are prompting airlines to raise fares and jam more people into fewer, more fuel-efficient planes.
With jet fuel prices up 70 percent from a year ago, U.S. carriers could see losses of more than $7 billion this year, airline analysts estimate.
"This is an extraordinary crisis with the potential to reshape the industry with impacts throughout the global economy," said Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, as he opened an annual gathering of airline executives in Istanbul last week.
A partial solution might lie here on a hillside with a vista of Honolulu, where Air New Zealand and aircraft maker Boeing Co. have been working with Hawaiian agriculture experts to develop a strain of weed that could help the industry reduce its dependence on crude oil.
The weed, which resembles a fruit tree, can be grown virtually anywhere, doesn't need much water or fertilizer and is not edible.
In India, the plants are mainly used as hedges to keep cows out of farm fields.
In the U.S., some researchers have been growing the trees to process biodiesel that can be used in automobiles and factory machines.
"It's an ugly-looking plant, to be honest with you," said Lance Santo, an agronomist for Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, as he held a golf-ball-size nut that had fallen from a jatropha plant.
Within the nut were two seeds resembling peanuts. They contained 30 percent to 40 percent oil.
Researchers looking at various crops discovered that the quality of jatropha oil was better than most for making jet fuel. Jatropha fuel also produces about half the harmful carbon emissions of fossil fuel.
Air New Zealand said its jatropha oil for the test flight will come from fields in southeastern Africa and India. The oil will be refined into jet fuel at an unspecified "hydro plant" in the United States that the carrier declined to name for competitive concerns.
For safety reasons, the initial test flight will involve running only one of the four engines with the fuel. If this flight is successful, subsequent test flights gradually will use the fuel on all the engines.
Researchers here have found that an acre of the plant can yield about 300 gallons of oil, or five to seven times more than other potential feedstocks such as soy beans.
After it gets its first supply of jatropha-based jet fuel in July, Air New Zealand will have to wait a few months for regulatory approvals and fuel certifications to begin the test flights, which, if all goes well, could occur in September.
At the agricultural field office here, jatropha is also seen as holding promise for Hawaii's agricultural industry. With lower-cost foreign competition, Hawaii has only two sugar cane growers now, down from a dozen when Santo began working for the state's agriculture department in 1972.
Agriculture experts are not sure whether jatropha can replace sugar cane as a new crop but researchers are also looking at other uses, including plant extracts that they recently discovered had properties similar to those of latex.
"It'll be a while before we can say it's a miracle plant," Santo said. "But we've just scratched the surface."
Peter Pae writes for the Los Angeles Times.
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