Biofuels like this have some very significant scale constraints, and quite literally amount to burning food. Per the article:
Virgin Atlantic’s 100% SAF flight is a one-time stunt, and the airline won’t regularly offer all-SAF flights. Standard jet engines aren’t designed to run on only sustainable fuel, and it is too expensive and rare for it to be practical for airlines to run all-SAF routes.
Big deal, I’ve gone my entire life fueled by fat and sugar.
But are you a plane?
Are you a bird?
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They did test flights here with “bio-kerosine” made from old kitchen fat. While this is a nice thing, it is a mere publicity gadget. We did some back-of-the-envelope calculations about this. Starting from the amount of kerosine currently sold in this country, over the relative low output of usable “bio-kerosine” from recycled kitchen oils and fats to the production specifics, we got a result.
Even if we turned each and every piece of arable land - fields, meadows, pastures, wine yards, commercially used forests, gardens - everything from the sea to the mountains into rapeseed fields, every year, without crop rotation, we still won’t get enough of this “bio-kerosine” out of it to keep commercial planes in the air at current levels.
I’m fueled by fat and sugar. How do I fly across the Atlantic?
Insert “Your mom let them ride her that long?” Joke here
