I have written an article on Hydrogen Powered Car, now I have stumbled over Bio Fuel Powered Airliner (Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aka Jumbo Jet to be exact) and I am eager to write my predictions and my views on it…

According to BBC, A Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet has flown between London’s Heathrow and Amsterdam using fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts.

One of the four engines of the Boeing 747 ran from a mixture of 20% Bio Fuel and 80% conventional aviation fuel connected to an independent tank.

Okay, let’s look at some figures…

Maximum fuel capacity of a Boeing 7474-400 is 216,840 Litres, so if we use that figure, each engine is going to consume around 54,210 Litres. Since the Bio Fuel is mixed at the rate of 20% so each engine is going to consume 10,842 litres of Bio Fuel made from babassu nuts and coconuts… Gee! That’s a LOT of coconuts!

747-fuel-layout.gif

You can see from the above image that all 4 engines are somewhat independent but when it comes to the reserve tank, it is going to be connected to all 4 engines. If all the engines on an aircraft is going to be powered Bio Fuel, then a considerable amount of mechanical devices needs to be changed. I rather not list all of them but Density and Pressure comes into play, along with Freezing point of Bio Fuel is very low compared to Jet Fuel, thus it will freeze at high altitude… That is why they mixed 20% of Bio Fuel with conventional Jet Fuel so wouldn’t affect the mechanical systems.

What people fail to see is, Bio Fuel powered Aircraft is not possible and we could list all the reasons for days… We need a LOT of coconuts and even if we manage to produce some kind of Bio Fuel from any other means, it is still not possible to power all the Aircrafts, because of the ridicules amount of fuel needed to power them and the need to change mechanical systems to accommodate the Bio Fuel systems in the aircrafts.

What I see from this is a media stunt, and Virgin Atlantic has once again made a huge mark on the consumers and it is definitely going to attract some clueless customers who worry about the environments without knowing the facts!

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