Jatropha, a wild shrub growing on uncultivated lands has for long being endemic to India and parts of Africa. Its significance as a bio-fuel also has been touted for long. Now in a first, oil derived from Jatropha has been used to fly an Air New Zealand Boeing 747. This is good news for an industry (and a world) which has been buffeted by stratospheric fuel prices over the last year.

The landmark flight took place on December 30th when an Air New Zealand Boeing 747 took flight for two hours with one of its four engines supplied by a 50-50 mixture of jet fuel and jatropha oil. This marked the first time ever for a commercial aviation test flight running on jatropha as a bio-fuel (Virgin Atlantic had tried out a bio-jet fuel blend made from babassu and coconut oils in a commercial flight in February). More pleasing was that the fuel mixture gave satisfactory results for all the tests performed during the flight.

Air New Zealand is seriously looking at bio-fuels as part of its future shift towards alternative fuels. By 2013, it plans to use up one million barrels of bio-fuel a year, or about 10 percent of its total projected fuel consumption. In a statement Chief Executive Rob Fyfe said,

"It is Air New Zealand's long-term goal to become the world’s most environmentally sustainable airline and we have today made further significant progress toward this."

Critics however warned that Jatropha as a bio-fuel is unreliable because it is toxic and yields are said to be undependable. Each fruit ripens at a different time and thus needs to be harvested continuously making it very labour intensive.

UOP, a division of Honeywell, refined the jatropha oil into a synthetic jet fuel. The process used was similar to that for refining typical petroleum fuels. The fuel used as a blend however cannot be used as a complete replacement for jet fuels because of differing chemical structures. Also, since the experiments were started fuel prices have started coming down again making plant derived fuels more expensive to manufacture than fossil fuels. Even then, this initiative promises a lot for the future as jatropha as a bio-fuel does not compete with commercially grown crops for land space. An added plus is that plants trap as much carbon dioxide as is emitted when the fuel is burned.

Image Source: Flickr.com