Commercial Biodiesel Use

The applications for Biodiesel are wide and it could become the main source of fuel for the following industries.

Aircraft

Initial tests performed by Boeing, one of the world’s biggest makers of aircraft, found that biofuels have no effect on performance and present no technical or safety problems, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by over 50 percent.

The testers at Boeing’s environmental strategy group say that biodiesel easily meets all jet fuel requirements. A full report on the test flights will be released shortly and aviation biofuel could be approved for use within a year.

Aircraft produce about 3 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions, the main greenhouse gas, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. So the use of biodiesel could significantly reduce pollution if it was adopted by all airlines.

The main issue here though is how fast growers can start producing and refiners processing enough biofuel to make it widely available and a practical alternative to the Jet A fuel which is currently used.

A number of the main airlines including Boeing, Virgin Atlantic, New Zealand Air, Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines have carried out tests using a mixture of biofuel and regular jet fuel over the past 15 months. They used a variety of planes and biofuels including blends of babassu, oil from sustainably grown coconuts, algae, jatropha and camelina.

From the testing it seems that camelina has the most promise for sustainability, due to its ability to grow on poor quality soils and to produce high volumes of oil.

Automobiles

Chrysler released the Jeep Liberty in 2005 from the factory into the American market with 5% biodiesel blends, indicating at least partial acceptance of biodiesel as an acceptable diesel fuel additive. They have since indicated that it should be possible to increase up to 20% biodiesel blends if the quality of biofuel in the United States can be standardised.

Trains

The newest addition to Virgin's train fleet in the UK, the Virgin Voyager train, is thought to be the world's first biodiesel train. It has been converted to run on 80% petrodiesel and 20% biodiesel. This should result in a saving of 14% on direct emissions.

Some trains in the US have also been testing out biodiesel with a mix of up to 25% biodiesel to 75% petrodiesel. The biodiesel here is generally made in part from canola which is produced in agricultural regions.

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