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

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to standard 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 started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the finest candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, 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 perform research study and advancement into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic specialists for the project.

The most recent airline to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One really motivating advancement has been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers thereby avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a blended blessing undoubtedly if some people wound up starving just to satisfy someone else's green qualifications.