Originally Posted by
rickair7777
Hate to break it to you, but if you fly an RJ like you're profile says you'd better be super-gung-ho about digging up Canada and Alaska to get at that oil...the airline business cannot survive a signifanct shortfall in oil production in the near future. I'm not one of those folks who think that we will be out of oil in 18 months, but I know for a fact that we will need to aggressively exploit previously untouched reserves...fortunately, technology is making it practical to get at oil that was too hard to reach in the past.
Alternatives fuels can work great in the vast majority of applications, but turbine aircraft is not one of them...we need time to develop technologies that will allow airliners to use non-petroleum, and even more time to implement them. The capital costs of airliners are so high that companies need 15-20+ years to pay for them...we can't afford to just scrap all the planes we have in service and buy new ones.
Before anyone starts spouting off about hydrogen or solar (
) powered airliners, do a serach for one of my previous threads on the technical problems associated with alternative fuels in aviation.
Rick,
Yes turbine aircraft can run on some biofuels. Like I was saying virgin america is doing a test flight using the existing GE cf 6 engines on a 747 with a 20% bio diesel/ 80% jet fuel mixture. Jet fuel is alot like kerosene which is close to diesel. GE says the CF 6 engines can run off of bio-diesel without any modifications. Will it work for all engines? That remains to be seen but one of the issues I did read, I think someone else may have posted it, that there is a problem with bio-fuel gelling when at cold temperatures which would be a problem at high altitudes, however the problem could be solved with some types of additives. I think these are promising things and that we will find a solution in our life times. I do not believe we have hit peak oil like someone else is saying, and the fact that some people think it is frightening that we will have to use tar sand, and oil sand is silly. These sources were not economically feasible when oil was $10-25/bbl but now that we are at $80-90/bbl they will be and I can tell you that the technology to get it is there. All that to say that we can also convert coal to gasoline/avgas/jetfuel and diesel which I have said before. Worrying about this is silly and investments are being made in alternative energy sources already. I think the market will come up with something in the next 10-20 years to ween us off of oil. We aren't going to go back to the dark ages like everyone seems to think on this thread