http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/air-canada-flew-50-cooking-oil-biofuel-first-time.html

I wonder if use of biofuel made from cooking oil becomes widespread, whether there will be enough cooking oil to go around? Also I wonder about the economics--does a gallon of biofuel cost as much to aquire as a gallon of regular jet fuel?

 

John

Yeah! Now the price for food can rise, my grocery bill can get even larger, even more people will starve in third-world countries... and .00000000000000000000001% of the world-wide carbon dioxide level will disappear. (number not accurate :lol: )

 

I have a truck at work that uses E85, and only gets about 60% of the MPG when using it instead of regular gas. I wonder what the ratio is in a turbojet?

Have to start eating more french fries. :Pig:

 

Jim

CYWG

Yeah! Now the price for food can rise, my grocery bill can get even larger, even more people will starve in third-world countries... and .00000000000000000000001% of the world-wide carbon dioxide level will disappear. (number not accurate :lol: )

 

I have a truck at work that uses E85, and only gets about 60% of the MPG when using it instead of regular gas. I wonder what the ratio is in a turbojet?

 

I think KLM got something like a 1% fuel efficiency increase during their trial, but I'm not sure. The cooking oil used is a recycled waste product, so isn't cutting into anyone's food production or grocery bill. In fact your local fast food place could probably drop their prices (very slightly) if they could sell their cooking oil rather than having to pay for the trash collectors to take it away. IIRC aviation produces 10% or so of the annual CO2 output by the way.

 

There are also a lot of other biofuels in devlopment that don't require food crops, or even biomass grown on land that can also support food crops. One of the most promising I've heard of (in terms of resource saving) processes gasses from iron smelters. I think Virgin Atlantic was partnering with that company.

 

I wonder if use of biofuel made from cooking oil becomes widespread, whether there will be enough cooking oil to go around? Also I wonder about the economics--does a gallon of biofuel cost as much to aquire as a gallon of regular jet fuel?

 

John

 

At the moment biofuels are more expensive than regular jet fuel. As biofuel production scales up the prices will drop though, and it doesn't look like regular kerosene will become cheaper any time soon.

It is amazing the different ways all the airlines are going to save money. Delta bought a refinery to try and curb costs.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-30/delta-air-said-to-near-accord-to-acquire-conocophillips-refinery.html

I always wondered whether or not bio-fuels would be powerful enough. I mean, do they burn hot enough, can you get as much energy out of a unit volume as you could with good old kerosene?

 

I agree though that once full scale manufacturing starts up the price of bio-fuels should drop considerably, and it would provide a much more stable long term solution.

 

Ró.

I agree that using Bio Fuels or using resources like Corn for fuel causes more problems then what it is worth. Rising food costs will create more problems then just rising fuel costs.

 

Rising fuel costs makes food costs go up anyways and start using bio fuels then food costs will go up exponentially.

 

Some countries food is very expensive and were I live our farmers don't get government food subsidies, and we have to ship our food in longer distances over the ocean. Typical grocery bill in New Zealand is about double what people pay in the USA.