Nice to see big Boeing is leading the way a little.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34105/118/

Im pretty sure i read an artical in Air and Space magazine that Richard Branson is doing the same and investing a big chunk of cash each year to te same research. It would be great if we could get a cheap fuel that would lower prices of tickets and increase profits.

I think that is the Biofuel that Richard Branson helped create for use on all his Virgin Atlantic planes by the year 2010.

Sometimes I feel higher fuel prices help aviation. Airlines can up the price of tickets to adjust. They are flexible. The higher gas prices make people more willing to fly than drive. I use to drive from Houston to Dallas but now I'd fly as it's cheaper.

I'm glad that Boeing is doing this. I'm very concerened about the envrionmental future, but i'd hate to see aviation the last ones to develop this wonderful technology. I don't want my kids, and future grandkids to suffer the consequences of OUR actions towards the environment, but still want to see aviation have a strong position in the world's economic, and technological area.

Don't get too excited...bio jet fuel is slightly cleaner than petroleum based kerosene (due to fewer contaminants), but fundamentally it is pretty much a very similar chemical mixture. It is just produced by a different process. If it weren't similar, it would not work in our current aircraft...they are designed for fuel with a very specific set of properties. Anything too different won't work, for a wide variety of reasons. I think the biofuel does have less energy density, which means shorter range.

The big advantage to bio-fuel is you can get it from some nice folks in Nebraska...no need to sup with screaming, psychotic, arab fanatics.

Rick a jet engine is one of the most forgiving engines out there. You can run everything from jet fuel to diesel to car gas. Diesel could be substituted with bio-diesel. They could use ethanol as well.

It's not uncommon for people to run a few hundred gallons of gas through an jet engine a year to clean the lines of algae that grew in the tanks of a jet. I believe they've put an additive in the fuel now where it isn't an issue but I know people who did it until recently. They still might.

I've personally flown a turbo-prop with avgas because jet fuel was not available in New Mexico when their pumps broke. The main disadvantages of running a jet engine on avgas or car gas is that it's more flamable. Your temps run higher easier so you can't get near the power out of your engine without over temping it.

Military vehicles even are designed to be able to run on JP8 if necessary which can be used in things from Humvees to jets. The main difference between Jet-A and diesel is the lubricants. You can take a VW with a diesel engine and fill the entire tank up with Jet-A and run it all day long if you add oil directly into the fuel tank with the jet-a. Jet-A/Diesel is slower burning and runs at lower temps which makes it more suitable for jet engines. Gas just burns them up too fast.

The engines can already run diesel so running bio-diesel shouldn't be that hard and bio-diesel is much cleaner and very easy for factories to produce and for us to farm.

Go AirNZ

Turbine engines can generally burn a variety of fuels, but not necessarily effeciently, or for very long without heat damage. The army ran an M-1 Abrahms on peanut butter once just to prove the point (creamy I presume). For regular line service an airplane needs a fuel that is VERY similar to jet A...otherwise you need a re-designed engine and possibly a different fuel storage and delivery system.

It'd be nice to see the development of new fuels from readily available sources such as old cooking grease (from KFC or a number of Chinese restaurants) or farm animal/zoo animal manure. Our former tenant farmer used to tell us his problems getting rid of manure from 8000 pigs. It's a stinky, dirty job!