JAL joins biofuel club

Japan Airlines joined the exclusive biofuel club on Jan. 30 when one of its Pratt & Whitney JT9D-powered 747-300s took off from Tokyo Haneda with one engine powered by a 50/50 biofuel/jet fuel blend. The biofuel was a cocktail of camelina (84%), jatropha (16%) and algae (less than 1%). JAL reported that the 90-min. flight went off without a hitch. As with other biofuel test flights, "no modifications to the aircraft or engine were required," the airline said in a statement. Capt. Keiji Kobayashi said, "Everything went smoothly. There was no difference at all in the performance of the engine powered by the biofuel blend and the other three engines containing regular jet fuel."

"Today is an extremely important day for Japan Airlines, for aviation and for the environment," JAL President Haruka Nishimatsu told media. "The demonstration flight brings us ever closer to finding a greener alternative to traditional petroleum-based fuel." He said JAL will be one of the world's first airlines to use biofuels when they are "produced in sufficient amounts to make them commercially viable."

The flight was the fourth and last in a series conducted by Boeing and its partners and focus now will move to the certification process. The crew checked the engine's performance during normal and nonnormal flight operations, which included quick accelerations and decelerations and engine shutdown and restart. A ground-based preflight test was conducted the day before the flight to ensure that the No. 3 engine functioned normally using the biofuel/traditional Jet-A blend.

Sustainable Oils Inc., a US-based provider of renewable, environmentally clean and camelina-based fuels, sourced the camelina. Terasol Energy sourced and provided the jatropha oil and the algae oil was provided by Sapphire Energy. Nikki Universal, a joint venture of UOP and JGC, supplied the biofuel used in the flight, which had been produced in the US by UOP.

Also known as gold-of-pleasure and false flax, camelina is grown in rotation with wheat and other cereal crops. It mostly is grown in more moderate climates such as the northern plains of the US and Canada but originally comes from northern Europe and Central Asia. Test plantings are underway in Malaysia, South Korea, Ukraine and Latvia.

According to Tom Todaro, CEO of Sustainable Oils, there currently are a few thousand acres under management, with an expectation of hundreds of thousands of acres within three years. "Within five years, projections are for between 100 million and 200 million gallons of camelina-based sustainable jet fuel," he said.