Virgin Airways' Richard Branson says plant waste can be used as jet fuel within 30 years.

MSNBC Story

 

Mr Branson is correct. Except it'll all come from algae....

 

I'm not sure ethanol is really the right answer for aircraft. With cars, fuel is a tiny fraction of the vehicle weight. Furthermore, vehicle weight is only a small factor in the fuel efficiency anyway. Going from a 12 gallon gasoline tank to a 16 gallon ethanol tank in order to get the same range is no big deal for an automobile. For aircraft however, they don't use gasoline anyway, they use Jet-A, which has properties similar to diesel/kerosene. To go from a fuel where you have 18,500 BTU per pound to ethanol that is maybe 11,000 BTU per pound would be a huge problem for an aircraft. Perhaps ethanol mixed biodiesel would be a more workable alternative; B80/E20 in order to get the high BTU density of biodiesel and excellent winterization characteristics of ethanol.

 

Maybe they'll be hybrids to compensate for the shortened range of the Ethanol.

 

Hi Pravus Prime:

___Hybrid aircraft? I can see it now … Instead of “Pulse and Glide”, we would be talking about “Climb and Dive” To bad about the passengers throwing up in the aisles however

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes

 

Don't laugh! One company actually proposed such a thing! Their theory was for a hypersonic trans-pacific service, like to Tokyo, Sydney, etc. in a fraction of the current time by sending the craft up to the edge of the atmosphere and basically bouncing it up and down off the edge of the atmosphere in a form of pulse and glide in and out of the regions of usable air. Undoubtedly they eventually realized that might be fine for cargo and hardy pilots, but not good for passengers.

EDIT: Well that didn't take long to find.. Info link

 

Hi AZCivic:

___I’ll be ****ed, that is an interesting idea!

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes