Virgin Atlantic's first biofuel flight

In a 747 containing a stunning 5% biofuel, Virgin Atlantic proved that you can indeed fly a plane on biodiesel.

There was actually some question as to whether it would be possible, because jet fuel has to stay liquid and non-viscous at extremely low temperatures. Most biodiesel at those temperatures would become too thick to feed into the engines.

However, a new biofuel start-up in Seattle, Imperium, created a mixture that stayed usable when mixed in ratios up to 40:60 with jet fuel.

The Virgin flight ran one of the four engines on a 20:80 mix of the Imperium fuel, for an overall replacement of 1/20th of the fuel used on the flight.

Of course, with recent fears over the sustainability of biofuels due to replacement of food crops and deforestation, it's unclear whether biodiesel is going to escape from this battle intact. Only if large-scale production of biodiesel from algae hits the mainstream will we see this technology taking off.

Ethanol has more of a future, as it's easier to produce it in mass quantities from waste products. However, ethanol contains less energy than biodiesel per gram, which is a trade-off the airline industry is unlikely to make, even if they can get it to run in jet engines.

Via the Wall Street Journal