14 DAY TRIAL // A few days back, we spoke about how Airbus and China teamed up in order to promote the use of biofuel in the aviation industry.
Recent news informs us that Lufthansa (i.e. Europe's largest airline as far as the overall number of passengers is concerned), entered a partnership with an Australian-based company known as Algae Tec.
Much like the collaboration between Airbus and Japan, this partnership is expected to up the use of biofuels made from algae in aviation.
More precisely, said companies are to build a new algae-to-biofuel facility in Europe, whose agenda will revolve around producing aviation kerosene and conventional diesel fuels. Environmental Leader informs us that the terms of this agreement are as follows: Lufthansa is to provide the necessary funding in order to jump-start this project, whereas Algae Tec will be in charge of managing the facility.
Apparently, Algae Tec already got busy opening an algae-to-biofuels facility in Australia only this past August, so nobody can argue it lacks experience when it comes to successfully implementing such green-oriented projects.
Interestingly enough, it seems that this plant will be built fairly close to a major industrial source of carbon dioxide, as this particular chemical compound will need be used as feedstock for the aforementioned microorganisms.
More precisely, whatever CO2 gets released into the atmosphere by this industrial site will be trapped and used to feed the algae.
However, more detailed information concerning where exactly this new facility is to be erected are still lacking. As well as this, the estimate costs for this project are yet to be made public.
All in all, this attempt to up the large scale production of aviation biofuels comes as good news indeed, especially from an environmental standpoint.
More so given the fact that, as previous trials carried out by Lufthansa indicate, biosynthetic kerosene is as efficient as the run-of-the-mill jet fuels, but cuts down CO2 emissions by about 50%.