It's bad enough for some propeller planes to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics could begin having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and insects, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet . It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical consultants for the job.

The most current airline to start explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One actually motivating advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thus avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some individuals wound up starving just to please another person's green qualifications.