Boeing, Honeywell UOP and Masdar Institute have today announced they will be undertaking in-depth study into halophytes as potential sources of second-generation biofuels. These grasses can grow in very arid land and salt water and are not a food source. Preliminary investigations have shown that they can provide a lot of oil per hectare of [...]

Jennifer Holmgren, Honeywell UOP, speaking about aviation biofuels at the Summit (Photo by Justin Hession/Getty for the Air Transport Action Group) We’re getting to the end of the day and it has been tremendously exciting to see all the delegates interacting and listening to the comments from the sessions. One of the major topics focused [...]

The Air New Zealand biofuel test flight went very well, by all accounts. The Jatropha-derived fuel performed as well as the normal Jet-A1 fuel in the other three engines of the Boeing 747-400. There will now be some further on-the-ground tests to be completed in Auckland before the second-generation biofuel is taken for even more [...]

The pre-flight briefing has just taken place at Auckland Airport, with Captain Dave Morgan going through some of the key stages of the test flight. One interesting point he made was that the Boeing 747-400 being used for today’s test has had to be taken off the New Zealand aircraft registry and re-classified an ‘experimental’ [...]

It is around an hour and a half until the Air New Zealand 747-400 takes off from the main runway at Auckland Airport on a flight powered, in part, by the oil from the plant Jatropha. So what exactly is Jatropha? Well, Jatropha is actually a species of around 175 types of plants, shrubs and [...]

It is interesting to reflect on the past couple of years in the aviation industry. When I first became involved in aviation at a global level in 2006, no one really believed biofuels would make much of an impact. In fact, there were those who thought biofuels were an impossible sell to aviation, considering the [...]