Airline Forms Partnership to Build First Biojet Fuel Plant in Europe

Saturday, April 10, 2010 by: Christopher Babayode
Tags: biofuel, airlines, health news

(NewsTarget) A leading UK airline has committed to partner with a US based clean energy company to establish a biofuel plant in East London. The plant will make fuel from waste from the city of London destined for landfill sites. The airline aims to reduce its net carbon emission contribution by half by the year 2050 and sees this as a step in that direction. The plant will convert 500,000 tons of household, agricultural, commercial and industrial waste into 16 million gallons of biojet fuel. Letters of intent have been signed by the airline to ensure it gets to buy all the fuel produced by the plant. The airline is quoted as saying that the plant will produce sufficient quantities of fuel for it to power its entire operation out of London City Airport twice over. Plans are also afoot to increase consumption of this virtually carbon neutral fuel should this venture prove successful.

The chairman and chief executive of the energy group is quoted as saying "The biojet fuel project will efficiently convert biomass into clean, renewable fuels and electricity and is completely carbon neutral; the plant will not produce any polluting emissions or undesirable by products". The entire project, financing and build of the operation are estimated to cost $280 million dollars.

Jim Davies the fuel operations manager said negotiations for the site are being finalized with land owners and local government . Construction is expected to begin in 2012 and completed by 2014. The plant will be self sufficient producing heat and electricity as by products. The electricity will be fed into the National Grid.

The Plant, a first of its kind in Europe will use the Fischer-Tropsch process, a technology developed in the 1940's. Waste is fed into a gasification chamber where patented plasma technology breaks it down at temperatures as high as 5000 degrees C. The gas is then converted into aviation fuel via the Fischer-Tropsch process. By-products are vitrified glass and naphtha (a flammable group of hydrocarbons) and are of use to the petrochemical industry. Fuel produced by the Fischer Tropsch process has been found to burn cleaner and is known to have a higher calorific value. The biojet fuel will offer lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions savings of up to 95 percent compared to fossil fuel derived kerosene.

A spokesman for the airline says as aviation uses one-seventh of the fuel consumed by ground transportation there is a more sustainable argument for using bio-fuels in aviation.

Sources

Cleandkies.com http://www.cleanskies.com/videos/british-air...

Cleantech.com http://cleantech.com/news/companies/solena-g...

Cleanedge.com http://www.cleanedge.com/news/story.php?nID=...

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