NZ Airline Flies Jetliner Partly Run on Veggie Oil December 30, 2008

Test Pilot , Captain Keith Pattie carries out pre-flight checks before their test of a Bio Fuel mixture in the left hand engine of Boeing 747 in Auckland, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008. Air New Zealand tested one engine of a Boeing 747-400 airplane powering it by a 50:50 blend of oil from jatropha plants and A1 jet fuel for the flight to test the fuel's viscosity.(AP Photo/NZ Herald, Paul Estcourt)

Dec 30, 8:11 AM (ET)

By RAY LILLEY

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – A passenger jet powered in part by vegetable oil successfully completed a two-hour flight Tuesday to test a biofuel that could lower airplane emissions and cut costs, Air New Zealand said.

One engine of a Boeing 747-400 airplane was powered by a 50-50 blend of oil from jatropha plants and standard A1 jet fuel.

This year has seen an unprecedented push for alternative fuels by airlines, which were slammed by skyrocketing oil prices earlier in 2008 and are now bracing for a falloff in air travel in the face of a global economic slowdown.

While Air New Zealand couldn’t say whether the blend would be cheaper than standard jet fuel since jatropha is not yet produced on a commercial scale, the company expects the blend to be “cost competitive,” according to company spokeswoman Tracy Mills.

Biofuels were once regarded as impractical for aviation because most freeze at the low temperatures encountered at cruising altitudes. But tests show jatropha, whose seeds yield an oil already used to produce fuels like biodiesel, has an even lower freezing point than jet fuel.Air New Zealand Chief Executive Rob Fyfe called the flight “a milestone for the airline and commercial aviation.”

“Today we stand at the earliest stages of sustainable fuel development and an important moment in aviation history,” he said shortly after the flight. The company’s goal is to become the world’s most environmentally sustainable airline.

The flight was the first to use jatropha as part of a biofuel mix.

In February, Boeing and Virgin Atlantic carried out a similar test flight that included a biofuel mixture of palm and coconut oil – but was dismissed as a publicity stunt by environmentalists who said the fuel could not be produced in the quantities needed for commercial aviation use.

Biofuels emit as much carbon as kerosene-based jet fuel, but jatropha – a Mexican plant that grows in warm climates – absorbs about half the carbon that jatropha-based fuels release. Air New Zealand’s proposed blend, for example, would mean a one-quarter reduction in the carbon footprint of standard jet fuel.

Many biofuels – like ethanol, which is produced from corn – have been blamed for raising the price of food by diverting it from kitchen tables to engines. While the link between biofuels and grain prices is debatable, Mills said that jatropha plants would not compete with food or other commercial crops since it can grow on land that would make poor farmland and needs little water.

“Ethanol is a first generation biofuel; jatropha a second generation biofuel that doesn’t compete for land with food production,” Mills said.

The test flight out of Auckland International Airport included a full-power takeoff and cruising to 35,000 feet (10,600 meters), where the crew manually set all four engine controls to check for identical performance readings among the biofuel-powered engine and those using jet fuel. Pilots also switched off the fuel pump for the biofuel engine at 25,000 feet (7,600 meters) “to test the lubricity of the fuel,” ensuring its friction in the pipe did not slow its flow to the engine.

Capt. David Morgan, the airline’s chief pilot who was on board the airplane, said results from the flight tests will provide the company and its partners with invaluable data to help jatropha become a certified aviation fuel.

The checks were “designed to test the biofuel to the fullest extent,” Morgan said.

While the airline heralded the flight as successful, Air New Zealand Group Manager Ed Sims cautioned that it will be at least 2013 before the company can ensure easy access to the large quantities of jatropha it would need to use the biofuel on all of its flights.

Test Pilot Captain Keith Pattie, right, Air New Zealand's Chief Pilot Captain David Morgan, left, pose with the company's CEO , Rob Fyfe before their test of a Bio Fuel mixture in the left hand engine of Boeing 747 in Auckland, New Zealand, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008. Air New Zealand tested one engine of a Boeing 747-400 airplane powering it by a 50:50 blend of oil from jatropha plants and A1 jet fuel for the flight to test the fuel's viscosity.(AP Photo/NZ Herald, Paul Estcourt)

“Clearly we are a long, long way from being able to source commercially quantifiable amounts of the fuel and then be able to move that amount of fuel around the world to be able to power the world’s airlines is still some years off,” Sims told New Zealand’s National Radio.

The company bought the seeds from plantations in East Africa and India that total 309,000 acres (125,000 hectares).

The company hopes that by 2013, 10 percent of its flights will be powered, at least in part, by biofuels, Mills said. Most of those using the blend would be short haul domestic services.

Simon Boxer, of environmental group Greenpeace New Zealand, said it was inevitable that airlines would show greater interest in sustainable biofuels as travelers become more aware of the harm that air travel causes the environment.

But he said it wasn’t clear whether jatropha was really sustainable. He questioned what the environmental impact would be if jatropha grew popular and more land and resources were needed to produce it on a commercial scale.

The flight was a joint venture by Air New Zealand, airplane maker Boeing, engine maker Rolls Royce and biofuel specialist, UOP Llc, a unit of Honeywell International.

The flight, initially scheduled for earlier this month, was postponed after an Air New Zealand A320 Airbus crashed off Perpignan on the south coast of France on Nov. 27, killing all seven on board.

Source

Related Story: First Flight of Algae-fuelled Jet

Fill ‘Er Up With Human Fat December 25, 2008

From the Really-Over-the-Top Department:

How a Beverly Hills doctor powered his SUV using his patients’ spare tires.

Human Fat Biofuel-powerd Lincoln Navigator

Liposuctioning unwanted blubber out of pampered Los Angelenos may not seem like a dream job, but it has its perks. Free fuel is one of them.

For a time, Beverly Hills doctor Craig Alan Bittner turned the fat he removed from patients into biodiesel that fueled his Ford SUV and his girlfriend’s Lincoln Navigator.

Love handles can power a car? Frighteningly, yes. Fat–whether animal or vegetable–contains triglycerides that can be extracted and turned into diesel. Poultry companies such as Tyson are looking into powering their trucks on chicken schmaltz, and biofuel start-ups such as Nova Biosource are mixing beef tallow and pig lard with more palatable sources such as soybean oil. Mike Shook of Agri Process Innovations, a builder of biodiesel plants, says this year’s batch of U.S. biodiesel was likely more than half animal-derived since the price of soybeans soared.

A gallon of grease will get you about a gallon of fuel, and drivers can get about the same amount of mileage from fat fuel as they do from regular diesel, according to Jenna Higgins of the National Biodiesel Board. Animal fats need to undergo an additional step to get rid of free fatty acids not present in vegetable oils, but otherwise, there’s no difference, she says.

Greenies like the fact that waste, such as coffee grounds and french-fry grease, can be turned into power. “The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel–and I have more fat than I can use,” Bittner wrote on lipodiesel.com. “Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly but they get to take part in saving the Earth.” Bittner’s lipodiesel Web site is no longer online.

Using fat to fuel cars might be environmentally friendly, but it’s definitely illegal in California to use human medical waste to power vehicles, and Bittner is being investigated by the state’s public health department.

Although it’s unclear when Bittner started and stopped making fat fuel or how he made it, his activities came to light after recent lawsuits filed by patients that allege he allowed his assistant and his girlfriend to perform surgeries without a medical license.

Attorney Andrew Besser, who represents three patients, says the assistant and girlfriend removed too much fat from clients and left them disfigured. Dozens of other patients have complained to the state medical board, Besser says. The board is investigating Bittner but declined to comment.

The investigations, however, might go nowhere: Bittner closed his practice, Beverly Hills Liposculpture, in November and moved to South America to do volunteer work at a clinic, according to a note on his Web site. Besser says Bittner likely fled the country because of the investigations. Bittner’s lawyer didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Source

Dutch Company’s ‘Ecofont’ Saves Printer Ink December 23, 2008

From the Maybe a Bit Over-the-Top Department:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — A Dutch company looking for ways to reduce the environmental costs of printing has developed a new font that it says cuts ink usage by about 15 percent.

In essence, the “Ecofont” has little holes in the letters.

Spranq, the Utrecht-based marketing and communications company that designed the font, struck on a Swiss-cheese design after failures with earlier experiments using thin letters and partial letters — like the stripes of a zebra.

“It turns out that it’s necessary to preserve the size and outline of letters to keep them readable,” company co-founder Gerjon Zomer says.

• Click here to download the Ecofont.

He concedes the font isn’t beautiful, but says it could be adequate for personal use or for internal use at a company.

Spranq offers the font free on its Web site. Zomer says his site saw a spike in traffic last week as word of the Ecofont began to spread. Much of the international traffic came from the United States.

He says that was kind of gratifying because “when you put something online you never know what to expect.”

The company is inviting developers to improve the Ecofont further under a free, open-source model, and Zomer says Arabic and Hebrew versions are already under development.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,471088,00.html

Oil Crisis-era Car Ads December 6, 2008

By Bob Ferrari

So you are trying to figure out just “what went wrong”, with the US Auto industry? To answer this question, we’ll need to travel back to the Oil Crisis of 1973… from there, we will let a long forgotten hit song and some old auto advertisements answer this question.

What was big back in 1973? Well there was this hit song by Dickie Goodman, Energy Crisis ‘74 , which was a munging of a an interview where the dialogue consisted of snippets of hit songs and movie soundtrack snippets from that same year. It was very similar to another 45 hit record, Mr. Jaws.

Want to know what else was big? American cars, the bigger the better. While Europe and the rest of the world downsized many years earlier from small to tiny to microcars, the American automobile shrunk from the aircraft carrier 1959 Cadillac down to the battleship 1973 Ford Tornino.

You get the picture, the American car remained large and lumbering, more like riding a shopping carriage on a roadway made of water beds with the handling capabilities of a municipal stadium.

In this same vein and under the current penumbra of the big Three US automakers begging for a piece of the Big Bailout of 2008 while each of these executives flew to the big begfest in their own corporate jets, we take you back to the myopic 1973. To see with your own eyes the opening act of the end of the big American automobile.

10 MPG American automobiles

Enter the Gas sipping Japanese import

Another gas hog

Watch these automobile ads at the link below. The rest of the world “got it”, but apparently Detroit didn’t, back in ‘73.., ‘83..,’93…, or even 2003. 2008..hey they get it now!:

http://www.oobject.com/category/oil-crisis-car-ads/

Climate Advisors Take Electric Road December 2, 2008

ANALYSIS
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

The committee sees a major UK role for wind, but not for solar (Getty Images)

“Welcome to the electric future.”

That was the key message from the Committee on Climate Change, the government’s new advisory body, as it delivered its recommendations on how the UK should meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.

There is a wealth of detail tucked away in its 500-plus page report.

It proposes five-yearly “carbon budgets” that the government should adopt, and suggests a range of policy options for achieving them – among which weaning the nation’s power providers off fossil fuels is clearly the priority.

The committee sees a rapid rise in the UK's use of low-carbon electricity. (CCC)

“One particularly important development is the de-carbonising of electricity,” the committee’s chairman Lord Turner told reporters.

“Once we de-carbonise generation, we can apply electricity to new areas such as road transport and the heating of buildings.”

By 2020, renewables – principally wind – could generate about 30% of the UK total. Efficiency improvements, nuclear – a “cost-competitive” technology – and carbon capture and storage (CCS) could all play a role.

Or could they?

“The targets are incredibly ambitious,” said Jayesh Parmar, a partner in the energy and utilities practice of Oliver Wyman, the global management consultancy firm.

Story continues here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7758752.stm