US aerospace giant Boeing has said that by 2030, all of its commercial planes will be certified and capable of flying on 100 per cent sustainable fuels.
Rather than being derived from petroleum, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is produced using renewable feedstocks such as cooking oil, animal fats, non-edible plants and agricultural waste. It is claimed to reduce lifecycle fuel emissions by up to 80 per cent compared to traditional jet fuel, but under current regulations, planes are not permitted to fly with anything higher than a 50/50 blend of SAF and conventional fuel.
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With the aviation industry having committed to dramatically reducing its carbon emission by 2050, the proportion of SAF that aircraft use in their fuel mix will have to rise. Boeing says that – by 2030 – all its commercial aircraft will be certified and compatible to fly with 100 per cent SAF.
“Our industry and customers are committed to addressing climate change, and sustainable aviation fuels are the safest and most measurable solution to reduce aviation carbon emissions in the coming decades,” said Stan Deal, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
“We’re committed to working with regulators, engine companies and other key stakeholders to ensure our airplanes and eventually our industry can fly entirely on sustainable jet fuels.”
According to Boeing, it has been working with airlines, engine manufacturers and others to conduct biofuel test flights since 2008, gaining initial approval for sustainable fuels in 2011. In 2018, Boeing partnered with FedEx on the ecoDemonstrator flight-test programme which used a 777 Freighter to make the world’s first commercial flight using 100 per cent SAF.
“With a long history of innovation in sustainable aviation fuels, certifying our family of airplanes to fly on 100 per cent sustainable fuels significantly advances Boeing’s deep commitment to innovate and operate to make the world better,” said chief sustainability officer Chris Raymond.
“Sustainable aviation fuels are proven, used every day, and have the most immediate and greatest potential to reduce carbon emissions in the near and long term when we work together as an industry.”
If the engines can run on sustainable fuels (regulations permitting) then presumably just about any aircraft can use 100% sustainable fuel. So this seems like Boeing maximising their publicity. Of course, it always depends on availability of the sustainable fuels in sufficient volume and cultivating biomass, for example, could add to global warming, if it involved deforestation.
Oh well, gone are the familiar airfield aromas of AVTUR, to be replaced with Chip Oil!
Progress is required, but, will it be 100% sustainable when all transport markets will require these products?
There is no obvious problem in burning high grade fuels from any source in gas turbines, so what is the issue here? Apart from satisfying Biden, the issue will be one of price of fuel and availability. The non-western world is not concerned about virtue-signalling and will run their airlines on Avcat / Avtur as long as they are cheaper. Will people be allowed to choose or will Boeing / USA try to force compliance in their usual high-handed manner that has caused so much misery in victimised countries?
I don’t know why butanol isn’t more widely considered as an aviation bio-fuel; the technology has been around for almost a century … https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1056869/pdf/applmicro00286-0027.pdf
I imagine oil based essential high temp lubricants will be needed for high performance jet engines for some time to come – good to see them transitioning to different fuels though ( hopefully -55 deg C tolerant ) – would be great to see the shipping industry look for alternatives to bunker fuel – as they are quite the polluter – as is burning lime to make cement ( CO2) …..
With the current exponential rate of development, I would imagine by 2050 all internal combustion engines will be replaced with a more modern source of power. Just like the steam engine, they will become items that we love and cherish as the engineering of a bygone age.
Smells a little like greenwash – all that waste, chip fat etc. has to be first collected, transported and processed before it even comes near an airport. There will be an environmental impact from that.
Maybe Boeing PR is going into overdrive given their other more substantial problems. I imagine a poll of passengers asking: “are you more concerned with the fuel your plane uses or inadequately tested software and sensors ?” might indicate where more effort is needed.
Any aviation solutions which produce CO2 are a mistake regardless of the source of the fuel. Bio-ethanol, used cooking oil or even natural gas all produce CO2. It makes no difference that they are sustainable. In my opinion the only real solution is electrolytically produced hydrogen using surplus wind and solar output.
I would have thought that the quantities of fuel consumed by aircraft, far exceed the amount of usable material that they are talking about. I accept that they are talking about using waste products, but in the end the risk is large that food production acreage will be diverted to to producing fuel as it is probably a much more valuable crop then agricultural products.
Look at the distortions in food production that were caused when it was proposed that so called bio fuels were going to power cars.
We still have huge numbers of hungry people on this planet and the thought of turning over even 1 square metre of land to produce any sort of bio fuel is just plain wrong.
Solve the world’s food supply problems and then turn the attention to this sort of thing.
Interesting thought, Trevor, but how about propanol? I believe that it is quite easy to synthesise biologically and gives greater fuel capacity.
Jack Broughton the calorific value of the aliphatic alcohols increases with the number of carbon atoms, as does the flash point. Butanol has around 80% the calorific value of Jet A-1 fuel and just misses the flash point specification for that fuel (35° versus 38°C). Freezing point of butanol is much superior: -90°C, addressing Col Johns’ point
Peter Thomas aviation is the most intractable form of transport to decarbonise so to me it makes sense to reserve biofuels for this sector where power : weight really counts and discontinue their use where there are alternatives. So stop blending bio-ethanol into petrol for cars, since we’re told the internal combustion engine is a technological dead-end anyway. And cease burning imported wood in our old coal-fired power stations; build more nuclear
Butanol can be produced by biomass, although making it from fossil would be wrong, it still produces CO2 when you burn it. Like Trevor says, reserve the weird fuels for the air industry and forget cars, which will use something else (hydrogen, hopefully). But even then, will there be enough? We all need to eat more fish ‘n’ chips to save the planet. I can live with that.
Aviation is only responsible for <4% of the World's total emissions – I suspect we'd do the planet many more favours if we concentrated on the other 96%. The key global problem is green and sustainable energy storage. It seems that only simple mechanical solutions (eg gravity or low speed high inertia flywheels) are totally 'Green', and can be used for decades – perhaps even centuries – in the same way without any loss of storage capacity, efficiency or performance.
An interesting thought about hydrogen at high altitudes; there will always be some leakage of hydrogen gas, while other fuels are fairly dense and fall, hydrogen will go straight into the stratosphere and will mop up any ozone: and that will be the end of the ozone layer.
This is the law of unintended consequences, so often neglected!