The Future Of Aviation Fuel

We should have moved away from fossil fuels entirely and we have lost valuable natural habitats in the process. The United States is helping drive demand for this sugarcane ethanol as they are the largest importer there are other alternatives like cellulosic ethanol which aims to fix the issue of competing with food products like corn and sugarcane, it aims to use grasses like switch grass because it grows fast and is cheap but despite that ethanol made with it manages to be even more expensive and energy intensive due to the extra steps needed to convert the cellulose into sugars. The microbes can ease another method aims to use algae grown in ponds certain algae strains double in mass in just 6 hours. So creating large amounts of biomass can happen fast 30 times faster than food crops. They also flourish when carbon dioxide is pumped into their tanks which are why algae are responsible for more than 40 percent of the global carbon fixation.

There are plenty of strains of algae that grow in salt water or waste water too which would help us conserve our precious fresh water supplies but the quantities of water are immense and the use of salt water or waste water brings in extra steps for the extraction of the useful product just like corn derived ethanol. The energy extracted is much lower than the energy we need to put in making it unsustainable and unprofitable algae-based bio-fuels. Currently cost between 300 and 2600 dollars per barrel but because of its great potential to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

Researchers like those at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who have set a goal to reduce costs to three dollars per gallon by 2030 are working on ways to improve and make algae bio-fuels an affordable possibility primarily by developing new strains of algae that are perfectly suited for our needs. Algae do have one massive advantage that could see their use in niche applications, algae have a much higher fat content than food crops which means they can be turned into much higher energy green crude oil rather than ethanol. This green crude oil could potentially be converted into fuels for transportation that needs much higher energy densities that ethanol cannot provide like fuel for planes. The future of aviation fuel is incredibly hazy we have no clear answer for replacing kerosene in that process. Aviation fuel needs particular properties that ethanol simply does not have and we have no clear answer for how to decarbonizes the aviation industry batteries are too heavy for anything but extremely short-range small planes, hydrogen's low energy to volume characteristics makes it a nightmare to integrate into airframes and bio-fuels are either too expensive or not carbon neutral.

Part - I : The Truth Of The Bio-Fuels : Part I

Part - I : The Truth Of The Bio-Fuels : Part-II

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