It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods items.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research and advancement into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical specialists for the task.

The current airline to start explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights using a mix of 80 % fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers therefore avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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