
Mission Biotechnologies Sdn. Bhd
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Founded Date December 26, 2002
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Company Description
Airlines Focus On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
It’s bad enough for some prop airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics could start having a dig at business aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.
With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods.
Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects 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 significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to carry out research and advancement into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic specialists for the project.
The current airline to begin try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.
One truly encouraging development has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thereby avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles 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 usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else’s green qualifications.