KLM makes historic green flight with biofuel

A cluster of aviation executives, politicians and journalists boarded at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to test flight a KLM Boeing 747 jumbo jet, with one engine powered by a 50:50 mixture of biofuel and normal jet fuel. With a total of 40 passengers, the flight which circled above Holland for about 1.5hrs was considered historic in the aviation history as it was the first biofuel-powered flight to carry passengers.

Produced from the US, the biofuel used was made from camellia, an inedible hedge plant. Other airlines, such as Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand, also conducted similar test flights earlier using biofuel on engines but without passengers.

Financially supported by Pentagon, much of the biofuel research project was carried out by the US’s Defense Advanced Research Project. The work commenced last 2006 to lessen the military’s dependence on gas to power their aircrafts, ships and other vehicles.

Several research contracts were given by the agency to private firms, including a £4 million award to UOP, a division of Honeywell. UOP had provided biofuel for most trial flights to date, including the earlier tests by Air New Zealand and KLM.

Biofuel is expected to get approval for commercial use by the end of 2010. Industry groups target to produce 600 million gallons of biofuel annually by 2015, but it is only a fraction of the needed fuel by airplanes. Currently, air transport consumes some 85 billion gallons of fuel every year.

At present, airlines rely solely on normal aviation fuel. Jan Ernst de Groot, Managing Director of KLM, said that the air transport industry, in the decades ahead, will depend on alternative fuel to reduce emissions.