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Oil from humble saltwater plant blended with jet fuel on Etihad Airways flight

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On Wednesday, an Etihad Airways Boeing 787 in Abu Dhabi embarked on a roughly seven-hour flight to Amsterdam with its tank full of a mixture of jet fuel and biofuel. The biofuel was derived from oil pressed out of Salicornia plants, which require saltwater to grow. Gulf News reported that a full 50 percent of the jet fuel needed to take the plane to its destination was biofuel, which is an extraordinarily high ratio of biofuel to jet fuel, if this report is correct. Ars contacted Etihad Airways… (arstechnica.com) Mais...

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jet4ang
jet4ang 2
Cansoir, are you a major stockholder of Big Oil? Biofuels have been tested and available for two decades.
PlainSpeaking
Brent Bahler 1
Beyond the environmental benefits, are there economic and geopolitical implications which airlines and other prospective consumers of saltwater plant biofuels need to be concerned about? For instance, is this new biofuel mixture a commodity that can or will be patented? If yes, will it be a Middle Eastern entity that owns the patent? With this new solution, what new problems (if any) will the industry have to worry about?

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kd7eir
Jim Myers 9
We have DECADES of experience with biofuels. Where have you been for the past twenty years?
LukeRunciman0003
Luke Runciman 5
It depends on where the biofuel comes from. Oil derrived from the various strains of algae are said to produce zero sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions. Any other GHG emissions produced during combustion can be engineered to near zero through particulate filtration, much like the catalytic converter in your car. Unlike ethanol, algal biofuel doesn't compete with food nor require significant amounts of arable land. Algae can grow in basically any water type, eliminating the demand for fresh water for renewable fuel production. Liquid biofuels have been around for more than a century. The Model T Ford was orgionally designed to run on hemp derrived biofuel. ExxonMobil have announced the technical ability to produce 10,000 barrels of algae derrived fuel a day by 2025. That's from just one Californian algae farm. Algal biofuels provide both a practical and renewable liquidised fuel which in time will be scaled to reach commercial viability and dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of transportation.
PapaBill
Bill Gardner 5
Where my brother lives in Minnesota they use bio fuel there, its a mix, and its by law their that they have to use it.
Out here in Calif, we have a bio fuel plant that takes corn and make bio diesel.
Of course alot of cattle farmers are piss3ed because they are getting less corn for feed since the majority sell to the bio plant now.

yr2012
matt jensen 4
We've been using bio fuels for nearly a decade in pickups, big trucks and piston a/c. Better lubrication, virtually no detectable extra wear/tear on the parts. They are a patch for when your fuels cost more than 4.50E/ltr
TorontoJeff
Jeff Phipps 7
You won't find a magic solution. But they can definitely be part of the solution. Rarely does a solution just present itself that is perfect. Through testing and trial and error you develop the best solution for the problem you're facing. Bio fuels have lots of potential and because their are so many options for the feedstock, it will take a while to find the "best" solution for various applications.
Cansojr
Cansojr 4
I stand corrected.

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