The plane-maker is confident tobacco can make an excellent aviation biofuel

Aug 7, 2014 22:09 GMT  ·  By

Plane maker Boeing has a dream, and this dream is that one day in the not-too-distant future the good old tobacco plant folks have been smoking for decades will successfully power aircraft traveling all around the world.

To see this dream come true, the company has recently teamed up with South African Airways and SkyNRG. The goal of this partnership is to make sustainable aviation biofuel from a new breed of tobacco plant.

As detailed by Click Green, this new breed of tobacco that Boeing hopes to turn into jet fuel goes by the name of Solaris. The plant contains very little nicotine, but instead packs quite a lot of oil in its seeds.

Information shared with the public says that it is precisely this oil that Boeing and it collaborators want to collect and use to make a new type of jet fuel that is both environmentally friendly and fairly cheap.

Mind you, whatever tobacco-based aviation fuel Boeing and its partners will end up producing will not be used as such. On the contrary, it will be mixed with conventional fuel before being poured into one tank or another.

It is expected that, apart from helping the aviation industry green up this way, one such jet fuel will help South Africa create more job opportunities and experience an economic boost.

“By using hybrid tobacco, we can leverage knowledge of tobacco growers in South Africa to grow a marketable biofuel crop without encouraging smoking,” explained South African Airways Group Environmental Affairs Specialist Ian Cruickshank.