Charbax.com

Air New Zealand, in conjunction with Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation and Boeing, is testing the waters for a new fuel made from the algae found in pond scums, which could have the capacity to reduce the entire carbon footprint of the airline industry to zero. Source: inhabitat.com Found on Digg.

Virgin Airlines announced that it will start trialling the use of biofuels in a 747-400. The carrier has reached an agreement with the aircraft manufacturer Boeing and GE, a major engine builder, which will see the inaugural test flight taking place next year. Source: telegraph.co.uk.

Easyjet announces the Ecojet. I’d like to see Easyjet and Ryanair clear up for us which is the state of R&D for making the airplanes cleaner.

Can we do electric airplanes using batteries? How about biofuel? Hydrogen? Is it possible to use any clean energy technologies to lift an airplane even if it provides lower effeciency than kerozen?

I hope that Sarkozy and Merkel aren’t doing their pressure to secretly stop Airbus from doing R&D for implementing clean airplane technologies. If we simply need to setup biofuel refueling and distribution pipelines to every airport and manufacture biofuel using conventionnal agricultural fields, then let’s do it now and let’s have the prototypes flying as soon as possible!

I posted this to the pprune.org:

I just saw some awesome looking videos of the Tesla Roadster :

Supposedly it runs 250 miles on lithium ion batteries, that it takes just 3.5 hours to recharge it. And that it has a faster acceleration than any Ferrari or other fast car using gas.

See the videos here.

And so I am wondering if this usage of lots and lots of small Lithium Ion batteries could work in an airplane?

Supposedly the Tesla Roadster is safe since if one lithium ion cell explodes that it doesn’t affect the batteries around it, thus there is no explosion possible with this system. Would there be some way one could just get a jet airplane sufficient amount of those lithium ion batteries in there and get the sufficient thrust to the engine to lift an A380 or any type of short or long range airplane?

I don’t really think it is constructive to question Global Warming. It’s a fact. And saying that the air industry only is responsible for 2% of the CO2 emissions is not a solution to anything.

The fact is each passenger on an airplane pollutes much more than if that person had stayed at home with the heating on and driving a car around to work and the groceries. That only a small percentage of the population of the developped countries yet fly on airplanes and with the development of developping countries and advancement of everyone’s living standards then many more people will want to travel on airplanes.

If Ryanair is investing some hundreds of millions in buying new airplanes, and that other low cost european airlines are doing the same type of investments. Why aren’t they doing everything they can to have those future airplanes be flying on renewable 0% CO2 emitting energy. There is hydrogen, batteries, biofuels, where is the R&D? Where are the prototypes flying? Where are the BBC documentaries about investments that airlines are doing in clean airplane technologies? Where are the facts about possibillity for clean airplanes? When do politicians force airlines (as well as car manufacturers, housing, agriculture, manufacture..) to move towards clean fuel technologies?

I want to see the concept planes, the prototypes, the proof of R&D activities, the tax incentives on companies having clean energy investments, the BBC documentaries about positive developments by the industry to solve the energy and climate crisis.