It's bad enough for some propeller planes to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics might start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable options to conventional kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly 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 considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to bring out research and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical experts for the project.

The latest airline company to begin try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating advancement has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers consequently preventing a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.