It's bad enough for some prop planes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might start having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover feasible options to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to various kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foods items.

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the finest prospects 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 major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the task.

The most current airline to begin experimenting with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually carried out internal US flights using 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 really motivating development has been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers therefore avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long back, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize costs as US diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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