Jan. 7, 2008 -- If you were watching airplanes take off from Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston today, you probably wouldn't notice anything odd about Continental Flight No. 9990. But during its planned two-hour flight, the aircraft will be burning a fuel made of algae and jatropha, a plant that grows in arid lands.
The demonstration is the first by a U.S. commercial airliner to test biofuel in flight.
"Nothing has been modified," Erik Bachelet, president of engine manufacturer CFM International, told Discovery News. "The aircraft is expected to resume its normal daily service after the operation."
No passengers will be aboard for Wednesday's test flight, which required special licensing from the FAA. The point of the exercise is to collect information about how the airplane performs with one of its engines burning a fuel that is 50 percent petroleum-based and 50 percent derived from plants.
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"We're looking to see that the biofuel performs the same as traditional fuel," said Continental spokeswoman Susannah Thurston.
The fuel looks like ordinary jet fuel -- there's no algae smell and it's not green, said Susan Gross, a spokeswoman for UOP, a Honeywell company that develops and licenses technology to refineries.
The biofuel was blended with standard airplane fuel to meet density requirements for optimal jet engine performance.
UOP's general manager for renewable energy and chemicals, Jennifer Holmgren, said it's possible to meet the standards with biofuel alone, but with currently available technology it's too expensive. That is expected to change as the world's demand for energy increases.
To assure biofuel sources do not compete with land needed to grow food, UPO focused on algae, which grows well in brackish and even polluted water, and jatropia, which grows on arid lands.
Holmgren expects the first licenses for refining biofuel to be issued this year. Jatropia stock could be producing hundreds of millions of gallons of jet fuel within three to five years. Algae will take longer to establish as a biofuel, but in the next 10 to 15 years it could be generating tens of billions of gallons of jet fuel, she added.
Continental's biofuel test flight follows similar demonstrations by Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand. Japan Airlines is scheduled to make a biofuel test flight at the end of the month.
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