Or maybe it'll be algae, essentially pond scum, fueling them. Or jatropha, a smelly and poisonous subtropical plant with nicknames such as "black vomit nut" or "bellyache bush." Or liquid fuel converted from coal or natural gas, using a technology pioneered by Adolph Hitler's Nazi war machine.
Which fuel is best for an airline may depend on location, he says. In Asia, camelina is abundant. In Australia, Mexico and parts of South America, where conditions for growing jatropha are ideal, it likely will be the primary source of alternative fuels, Remy says. In North America, synthetic fuel may make more sense because coal and natural gas are abundant. (We think so, of course.)
Longer term, algae may be what fuels the engines in U.S. airline jets. It can be produced in high volume, and the USA has plenty of space to grow it.
"Jatropha and other grains will be on the market sooner, but only in the tens or hundreds of millions of gallons," says UOP's Holmgren. "Algae will be produced in the billions of gallons a little bit further down the road."
Algae is among the fastest-growing organisms on Earth. It takes up little space relative to its production capacity. Some strains can go from incubator to harvest in 14 days. And it grows best in brackish water, either in ponds, in a high-tech greenhouse environment known as a bioreactor, or on "algae farms," where nutrient-filled water flows through miles of tubes winding around a few acres of land.
Tim Zenk, vice president at Sapphire Energy, the San Diego start-up that produced the algae fuel used in the Continental flight, says his company's investors are motivated in part by environmental concerns.
"We think we'll get 3,000 gallons (of biocrude) a year per acre," Zenk says. "You're going to see very large scales of production." - - -
Note the "high-tech greenhouse environment known as a bioreactor", mentioned above. That would be one way, as we've suggested, to recycle CO2 coproduced by coal power generation and coal-to-liquid conversion operations, at the points of generation. And, on other, "algal farms" a significant portion of that "3,000 gallons a year per acre" would be recycled CO2, and would earn carbon credits. Moreover, since coal conversion generates other products, such as urea, which can be, and in China os being, used as fertilizer, a coal-to-liquid plant should be able to make the bugs grow in abundance.
And, finally, we have earlier documented Tyson Food's work on developing diesel fuel from chicken renderings. An in-flight meal for the plane itself? We would rather it chewed on chunks of coal, but, compared to coal, the amount of chicken fat available for processing would be small. Combining the two in a synthetic fuel manufacturing facility would be another synergy, where what is essentially a coal conversion processor could help clean up what might otherwise be only an unpleasant waste in need of disposal. The coal makes the environmental clean up opportunity possible.