A Qatar Airways flight from London to Qatar has become the first passenger plane to be powered by cleaner-burning natural gas that was converted to kerosene.
“Today’s flight opens the door to an alternative to oil-based aviation fuel,” said Malcom Brinded, international executive director of Royal Dutch Shell, which is partnering with Qatar Petroleum to produce so-called gas-to-liquid (GTL) kerosene from Qatar’s abundant natural gas reserves.During the five-hour flight, the Qatar Airways Airbus A340-800 jet was powered by a 50-50 blend of GTL kerosene and conventional oil-based kerosene jet fuel. An Airbus spokesman called the flight “a major breakthrough which brings us closer to a world where fuels made from feedstocks such as wood-chip waste and other biomass is available for commercial aviation.”
The spokesman predicted that by 2030, 30 percent of jet fuel would be derived from GTL or biofuels. Shell and Qatar Petroleum are building a plant in Qatar capable of producing one million tons of GTL kerosene annually.
Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360.
[photo credit: Flickr]
2 comments
Well, it is a good start. Airplanes burn huge amounts of fuel, so anything to make them a little friendlier helps. I heard a while back that the US Air Force was looking at switching to more renewable bio-fuels to cut down their oil dependency.
[…] fevereiro de 2008 se tornou a primeira empresa aérea a lançar vôo utilizando bicombustíveis, a Qatar Airways realiza seu primeiro vôo com combustível alternativo ao petróleo. O jato Airbus A340-800 foi abastecido com uma mistura 50% querosene produzido a partir de gás […]
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