Lufthansa Suspends Biofuel Test Flights
(Deutsche Welle) Lufthansa has stopped testing biofuel in its aircraft because it has exhausted its stocks of biosynthetic kerosene and no other reliable supplies are available. The final test flight was a long-haul service to the US.
German airline Lufthansa ended its six-month trial of biosynthetic kerosene with a transatlantic test flight on Thursday.
The Boeing 747-400 left Frankfurt for Washington DC carrying around 40 tons of a biosynthetic fuel mix. The company said the alternative fuel would reduce the flight’s carbon footprint by 38 tons – the same amount emitted by six connections between Frankfurt and Berlin.
The long-haul trial was the final test in a program that saw Lufthansa operate 1,187 domestic flights between Frankfurt and Hamburg using a 50/50 blend of regular fuel and bio-kerosene in one of the plane’s two engines. The result was a total saving of about 1,500 tons of CO2.
…Lufthansa may have found a solution to the food versus fuel debate, however.
Last month, Australian company Algae.Tec announced it signed a memorandum of understanding with the German carrier to jointly assess the fuel-making potential of oil extracted from algae grown in bio-reactors.
Other non-plant-based options for creating next-generation biofuels are also in the works. News agency Reuters reports British Airways plans to start powering its fleet with a fuel refined from waste by 2015. READ MORE
