First Transatlantic Flight Using 100% Sustainable Jet Fuel Takes Off (theguardian.com) 106
The first transatlantic flight by a commercial airliner fully powered by "sustainable" jet fuel has taken off from London Heathrow. From a report: Tuesday's Virgin Atlantic flight, partly funded by the UK government, has been hailed by the aviation industry and ministers as a demonstration of the potential to significantly cut net carbon emissions from flying, although scientists and environmental groups are extremely sceptical. Airlines have previously flown on a blend of up to 50% of alternative fuels, called sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), and flight VS100 is operating under special dispensation with no paying passengers, using fuel made mostly from tallow and other waste products.
One of those onboard, the transport secretary, Mark Harper, said: "Today's 100% SAF-powered flight shows how we can decarbonise transport both now and in the future, cutting lifecycle emissions by 70% and inspiring the next generation of solutions." Rishi Sunak said the flight was "a major milestone towards making air travel more environmentally friendly and decarbonising our skies." Virgin Atlantic said the flight to New York would show that SAF was a safe replacement for normal kerosene jet fuel. The Virgin Atlantic founder and president, Sir Richard Branson, also onboard, said: "The world will always assume something can't be done, until you do it."
One of those onboard, the transport secretary, Mark Harper, said: "Today's 100% SAF-powered flight shows how we can decarbonise transport both now and in the future, cutting lifecycle emissions by 70% and inspiring the next generation of solutions." Rishi Sunak said the flight was "a major milestone towards making air travel more environmentally friendly and decarbonising our skies." Virgin Atlantic said the flight to New York would show that SAF was a safe replacement for normal kerosene jet fuel. The Virgin Atlantic founder and president, Sir Richard Branson, also onboard, said: "The world will always assume something can't be done, until you do it."
Its still polluting (Score:4, Insightful)
Its still emitting CO2
The only sustainable fuel would be Hydrogen (or maybe ammonia)
Re:Its still polluting (Score:5, Interesting)
But combine it with carbon, you have synfuel, which is fuel. The carbon is released when you burn it, but it's just the carbon you put in previously.
Or if you want to take a half-step first, you can make the hydrogen from natural gas instead of hydrolysis.
Combustion of synfuel will still create some NOx which is not ideal, so it would still be better to convert most ground transportation to batteries instead of synfuel. Also the cost of making synfuel will not be competitive with charging a battery. But to keep aviation going sustainably, synfuel will work.
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But combine it with carbon, you have synfuel, which is fuel. The carbon is released when you burn it, but it's just the carbon you put in previously. Or if you want to take a half-step first, you can make the hydrogen from natural gas instead of hydrolysis.
At which point you should just have burned the natural gas in the first place and taken whatever carbon you were going to use to make your synfuel and bury it in the ground, which would be cleaner and far more efficient.
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The issue is where you got that carbon from. Few sources don't add more CO2 to the atmosphere in total.
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CO2 isn't a "pollutant" bro. It's only a problem when we dig its fossilized precursors out of the ground, burn them, and release additional CO2 into the atmosphere. That's a net gain. If you chop down a tree and enjoy a nice campfire, you aren't adding net carbon into the system, that is for all practical purposes carbon neutral. The problem is when you dig trees (and other organic materials) that have been buried for millions of years out of the ground and burn them.
If someone can conjure up a net zer
Re: Its still polluting (Score:2)
CO2 is a pollutant by definition when concentrations become problematic.
Your inability to read a dictionary doesn't change the definition.
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No, *sustainability* is not a property of any single point in the system, it is a property of the system *as a whole* -- from the ultimate energy source to the tailpipe. So *in theory* if you were to generate your aviation fuel from a crop like switchgrass (a perennial contender here), it *might* not matter if your airplane emitted CO2; every ton of CO2 emitted that way *might* be offset by CO2 captured by the switchgrass.
This actually works both ways. If you were to fuel your airplane with hydrogen, the
Re: Its still polluting (Score:2)
Fuel has Inherent problems. Notably that in order to get good efficiency you need high heat and therefore produce NOx. To solve that in automobiles we just DEF injection with SCR. But you can't put a catalyst on a jet engine. You would just be reducing the efficiency again. So you can have reasonably good efficiency or reasonably good emissions but not both while oxidizing with atmospheric gasses, the only oxidizer reasonably available.
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From my understanding the real problem with NOx is the ground level emissions are horrible for health. Does high altitude NOx emissions matter? I genuinely don't know.
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I think this might have what you're looking for, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Nobody ever claimed it wasn't outputting CO2 into the air, so nice straw man.
This is novel because we're using carbon that came from the air to make jet fuel, instead of carbon that came from deep underground where it's sequestered and better for us all to stay there. And if you're following along, if the carbon we are using as refined hydrocarbon fuel came from the air, it can be taken out of the air again via the same process: photosynthesis.
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Mice (Score:2)
The best solution to this problem is mice running on treadmills.
Facts buried 2 links deep (Score:5, Informative)
1) The fuel is from used cooking oil.
2) They claim 70% carbon reduction for full life cycle, not 100% as implied as per incorrect headline
3) Article says this doesn't scale (presumably because used cooking oil doesn't exist in necessary volumes but don't actually say that)
4) Flight was subsidized by the UK tax payers
I like fresh air and clean water as much as the next geek but this looks like greenwashing bullshit wasting funds that could have gone into research into something that would actually scale.
And I wonder where used cooking oil normally goes if not burned to fly a plane and was that taken into account into their calculations.
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Biodiesel, animal feed, soaps/detergents, waste-to-energy, etc.
But yeah, there's not some vast, transport-replacing quantities available.
Re: Facts buried 2 links deep (Score:2)
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More fried food FTW?
Re: Facts buried 2 links deep (Score:3)
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My gripe on that one is the local slashdot headline implying 100% carbon neutral with clever word choices. I found the headline intellectually dishonest. The actual article is honest about the numbers.
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My gripe on that one is the local slashdot headline implying 100% carbon neutral with clever word choices.
It doesn't imply that, though, and the summary notes 70% carbon emission reduction. You don't even have to read the article to fund that out
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Yes that's in the summary which is article copy/paste. The headline is locally generated and left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm making a distinction between article content from original source and local headline content from editor.
The first I'm good with. The second was distasteful and felt manipulative.
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You say great things and ask excellent questions and if I had any points to upvote you I would.
1: Used cooking oil still has a lot of energy density BUT DON'T WORRY JUST YET because it's not thrown out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
2. The carbon reduction is actually worse than 70% because the "used" oil must be decontaminated, filtered, and then burned, and even that burn is "dirty" so hydrocarbons are released. It's what makes SpaceX Stage 1 black-soot dirty, and why SAF should stick with natural prod
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If you like, you can call 24 tons 6000 gallons.
24 tons of JET-A is around 7100 gallons, so the case is even worse than you present.
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It's an UK flight so proper gallons, which means 24 tons is 6000 gallons or 27,288 litres.
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(presumably because used cooking oil doesn't exist in necessary volumes but don't actually say that)
Given that Yesterday's story [slashdot.org] noted that Heathrow alone consumed 20 million liters of jet fuel daily, I'd say your reasoning is absolutely the reason this does not scale... more than 7 billion liters of waste cooking oil yearly for one single airport seems like a nonstarter.
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3) Article says this doesn't scale (presumably because used cooking oil doesn't exist in necessary volumes but don't actually say that)
You don't need to use cooking oil. SAF can be produced from any type of oil or fat. The plant I'm working on at the moment uses tallow. The biggest issue in scale is not the raw ingredient, it's the processing supply. There's very few SAF plants currently in the world, so few that in the EU there's currently no path to hitting even the French government's target, let alone the wider EU target. There will need to be a fundamental market change to support this. But like any green change that market change wil
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It is good, but not all great
It produces much less carbon emissions. I am not sure how much extra energy is spent during filtering the oil (from food particles), and refining. Nevertheless it is just "waste" being repurposed into cleaner fuel (compared to gasoline).
However... as others mentioned there i
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Then we should just take extra new oil, fry up _nothing_ with it so it's easier to clean and sell it as used. Right?
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The summary says tallow, I guess given the abject horror of British food they may still use that there for cooking oil.
No product of animal agriculture can be considered sustainable on a planet with 8 billion humans.
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I'm just repeating what the article said. Not my field so for all I actually know it's fairy farts.
Good old Branson (Score:5, Insightful)
He'll never let a bandwagon go by without jumping on it.
This is nothing but greenwash. Scaling up is almost impossible as there simply isn't enough waste source oil/fat. This is just odl Richard polishing his phoney eco credentials once again while in the meantime he's sending rich millionaires up to the Karman Line using one of the most filthy solid fuel rockets Virgin Galactic could have chosen.
Re: Good old Branson (Score:4, Funny)
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But do they charge me extra for carrying it on?
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Yeah, this is the billionaire's version of running your diesel on fry oil. The first guys who got free oil from restaurants drove like kings. Maybe it still goes on some places; but people caught on and the used oil has a market now.
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Scaling up is almost impossible as there simply isn't enough waste source oil/fat.
I'm sure we can find you saying electric cars aren't viable due to lack of lithium
I'm sure we can find you saying solar panels aren't viable due to lack of rare earth metals.
I'm sure we can find some other non-green related comments of yours saying something isn't viable simply because you don't understand the basics of supply and demand or market economics.
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It's true, we can grow oil instead of food. I'm already paying 50% more for Canola oil as the Americans are buying it for fuel. Next will be replacing wheat with rapeseed, assuming it has the same water requirements. Wiki says that with climate change, it will be less cultivable. Also says needs a lot of fertilizer, especially nitrogen and sulfur along with good soil. Possibly replacing it with other species of Brassica would help but we're still trading farming for food with farming for energy in a world w
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Says someone who doesn't have a clue just how much fuel is required for worldwide aviation.
Yeah, um... (Score:4, Interesting)
... I'd pay extra to NOT fly on a plane powered by burning tallow.
The last thing I want to do is to increase the value of meat waste, thus making the meat industry more profitable.
Re: Yeah, um... (Score:2)
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Don't worry, I'm sure my consumption of dead animal more than keeps the industry profitable as it is...
Wow (Score:1)
misleading and confusing 2 terms (Score:2)
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Why would you use hydrogen as an aircraft fuel rather than sticking a (renewable or waste) carbon on it (aka, methane fuel instead)?
Hydrogen has atrocious energy density and awful handling and safety qualities (read: cost), both on the ground and in the air, compared to methane. Even rocketry, where you can afford to spend insane amounts of money to use something if it'll give you a slight performance boost, has been moving away from hydrogen. And unlike in rockets, which quickly leave the atmosphere, dra
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The trucking and aviation industries seem to be putting a fair bit of private money into hydrogen and not into synthetic fuel, I'm going to guess they judge it more expensive.
Also into SAF, but that's just an excuse to keep the status quo as long as possible.
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Product demonstrators for PR blurbs and tax credits are not a serious effort. It's similar to the auto industry's stalling on EVs from the 90s to the early 2010s while putting out fancy press releases about their prototype hydrogen cars.
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Daimler&Co were investing Billions before the Green Deal and EU response freed up public money for Hydrogen.
You could of course argue they were just trying to get ahead of the game to get it, but still ... they could have done that with synthetic fuel too.
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A 737-MAX has a fuel capacity of 25,800 liters. Jet fuel, depending on the precise formulation, has ~35MJ/L. That's ~900k MJ in a fully fueled 737-MAX. Compressed natural gas (aka: compressed methane) is ~9MJ/L, so roughly 1/4 as energy dense on a liter for liter basis, meaning you'd need ~100,000 liters of it to attain the same range.
It requires heavy pressure vessels for storage. Weight is generally something you try to avoid in an aviation application and now you're losing the battle twice, weight o
Re: misleading and confusing 2 terms (Score:2)
Ditto hydrogen for the same reasons.
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What made you think we were talking about compressed natural gas?
They're talking about liquid hydrogen, and I'm talking about liquid methane. The big problem with compressed gasses isn't even the density - it's the tankage weight.
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Liquid Hydrogen isn't appreciably better than CNG for volumetric energy density. LNG gets you up to 22MJ/L, which is better, but still only 62% of what jet fuel brings to the table. You just cut the range of your 737-MAX from 6,500km to ~4000km. That's going to be a hard sell with the airline and aerospace industries, not to mention their customers. Who is going to invest countless billions into CapEx to produce an inferior product?
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"Liquid hydrogen is awful" is exactly the point I was making!
First off, 62% is close enough! Planes rarely need to fly halfway around the planet without stopping; that's a tiny minority of flights, and not an exclusive requirement. 4000km is still NY to LA nonstop. The average US passenger flight is a mere 800km. Further, this is
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Oh, and we totally forgot to account for the fact that a plane full of liquid methane, even accounting for the more challenging tankage requirements, is probably lighter than a plane full of jet fuel (though it depends a lot on the details - for example, boiloff is not only fine but actually desirable (self-pressurizing), but you don't want to ice your wings in the process, so we get to an insulation discussion). Definitely heavier tankage, but the fuel has 23% more energy per kg, which is a very big differ
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4000km is still NY to LA nonstop.
Really, though, why on Earth did you pick such a short-range aircraft as your example unless you were trying to bias the comparison?
With one exception (an A321 on jetBlue), the 737 has accounted for every domestic flight I have taken in the last decade. From short hops (Portland to Seattle, Houston to New Orleans) to transcontinental (New York to Los Angeles, Seattle to Boston) routes, and all flights in between those extremes. We used to see 757s and 767s on transcontinental domestic runs. These days it's rare. The 737 dominates. It's literally the entire fleet of the two airlines (Alaska and Southwest) that I fly most frequen
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You boldfaced the wrong word. Let me fix that for you: "With one exception (an A321 on jetBlue), the 737 has accounted for every domestic flight "
The simple fact is, there is no issue designing planes to hold more fuel. Domestic flights don't have more fuel capacity not because it's impossible, but simply because it's not needed. I'll repeat: the mean domestic flight in the US is a mere 800km.
If your market wants 600
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Let me rephrase this in a different way:
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Answer the question about where you're getting net carbon neutral methane from.
My feelings will remain the same, FWIW, even if you have some magical net zero source of methane I'm unaware of. There are BIGGER FISH TO FRY. If you had quoted the entire paragraph you would have answered your own question.
Since no nation state or individual has unlimited funds to throw at this problem, the question becomes where can our available resources make the biggest impact. We can have a good faith discussion about
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Disinclined to further engage with you since you took the time to selectively quote my post while ignoring the very important question at the end: Where are you getting all this methane from in a carbon neutral manner?
Your methane fueled aircraft does not exist. I'm extremely skeptical it's within current state of the art, but even if it were, it'd come with downsides you continue to hand-wave away. It'd only be successful if you used the power of the State to mandate its adoption. There's no viable des
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Define damage. If you're talking physical damage risks, hydrogen is way worse. If you're talking greenhouse gases, hydrogen is also a greenhouse gas worse than CO2 (though to be fair not as bad as methane). But unlike methane it's also an ozone destroyer.
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(And, of course, hydrogen leaks *much* more readily)
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GWP Methane: 34
GWP CO2: 1
GWP Propane: 0.072
GWP Hydrogen: 8.8-14.4
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Anytime you burn something, excluding hydrogen, you expel carbon into the atmosphere.
I'm pretty sure I can burn magnesium and not expel carbon into the atmosphere. That's not saying magnesium makes a practical fuel for aircraft, it's merely one example to prove your statement wrong. Another example, and possibly a practical fuel for aircraft, is ammonia. I could go on.
Burring tallow, or animal fat, seems on the surface interring.
Huh? If the animal fat is burned then it is not interred.
But the devil is in the details, like how much energy does it take to turn fat into a useable fuel.
Even if the fuel production was a huge energy sink it is still useful since it enables us to maintain transportation without use of fossil fuels. We should certainl
Better than ordinary Jet Fuel ... (Score:2)
....But still horrifically polluting, not sustainable, not scaleable ...
Chips (Score:2)
token gesture (Score:2, Interesting)
Airplane travel is already more than twice as efficient from point of view of fuel consumption as travel by car or by bus, I won't get into debate about trains, in case if they are diesel powered or use electricity from 'dirty' sources.
Airplane travel makes about 2.4% of total CO2 emissions in the USA and around 1.7% globally. Is it a huge number? Well, our total CO2 production is close to 50 Billion tons per year, so it's large in absolute values but the gains from addressing other issues would be so muc
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We'd test carbon neutral fuels in aircraft first because that is where they have more margins to take on the extra cost, have more trained people watching closely for issues with the fuel, have the largest PR battles to fight on global warming, and is far from trivial on converting to batteries or some other means of energy storage. If they can make synthesized fuels work for the airline industry then it could find it's way into other industries, including the cars we drive everyday. The airline industry
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To compare apples and apples, a fully occupied long distance bus gets 330 passenger-mpg [wikipedia.org] (which is almost as good as electric high-speed rail) while a jetliner only gets around 100 passenger-mpg at best. [wikipedia.org]
How many tens of billions do you think it would cost to add another runway to LAX or SFO?
So you s
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But imagine how Popeye your arms will be after wheeling yourself a few thousand extra km.
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hey, you want to race a bicycle with some luggage and a couple of kids, more power to you,
They're called "cargo bikes" and often have electric assist too. Much cheaper than cars, kids prefer riding in them, don't get stuck in the traffic, and can use all the low traffic back roads.
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I like how the libertarian response to facts that don't match your worldview is "haha fuck you". You have an Communist level of belief in the way things ought to be in defiance o the way they are.
Cargo bikes are increasingly popular round these parts.
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I've never met someone so angry that other people are riding a bike.
Oh actually I have, the idiots cursing at the bikes going past them because they're stuck in traffic in a car they chose to drive because a bike is "too slow".
I don't give a shit about your allege "business" which involves vast amounts of short notice driving. Good for you. However no amount of your alleged business changes the fact that people manage with kids an stuff just fine on bikes, something you claimed wasn't possible.
It is, though
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First of all I don't care if you or anyone is riding a bike,
You really do. Else you wouldn't have been so angry about it.
your suggestion that I have to use a bike is ludicrous
When the fuck did I ever suggest you had to use a bike.
started with suggestions about me using a cargo bike, electric bike, whatever bike.
Gosh no wonder you're a Libertarian: your understanding of what's actually happening is completely detached from reality. That explains how you can hold the views that you do.
and I have been to Ams
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propose that grown up people should change to conform to your ideas and standards
Nope that's you just makin' shit up, same way you think Libertarianism works: make shit up. Made up shit is better than facts anyway.
it's OK, I don't do drugs and I don't eat fish, I was there because some family wanted to visit and so I decided to join
You're making excuses about not doing drugs for doing a perfectly normal thing (visiting a foreign city). You doth protest wayyy too much. It had never even occurred to me that
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In Toronto there are cannabis stores at every corner,
For someone who "doesn't do drugs" you sure bring them up a lot.
some Canadians have guns,
So?
you start preaching biking to them
Oh I see you think people other than you might also be so triggered by the merest mention of bikes that they'll murder someone?
I think you got the point
So far the only coherent point you've made is that you think that a significant people are commuting 2 hours each way.
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I won't get into debate about trains, in case if they are diesel powered or use electricity from 'dirty' sources.
I'll poke that bear. Starting with the fact that trains, at least in the US, are not cost competitive. Portland's Union Station to Seattle's King Street station is 173 miles. At the IRS mileage rate [irs.gov], which in theory takes all costs into account, that's $113.32 if I drive it. I have frequently seen Amtrak prices for that same trip exceed that price. You can beat it, if you book well in advance, but that's not a fair comparison with the automobile that accommodates without advance notice my precise nee
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You didn't need that catalytic converter anyway. Just add the $1500 replacement cost to your train ticket math. :-)
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Of course trains in N. America have to pay for their track, including in some of the USA land taxes on that track and passenger trains have to rent the use of the track from the railroad companies and run on their schedule. Basically passenger rail in N. America is mostly fucked for various reasons.
Better comparison would be how much to ship a few tons of freight compared to air, especially if the air freight service had to pay the full price for the airport. Even compared to trucks, trains are much more ef
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Airplane travel is already more than twice as efficient from point of view of fuel consumption as travel by car or by bus,
This is not true. The best long haul planes get ~100 mpg US per passenger. A Toyota Prius won't beat that, if it only has the driver. By the time it has two occupants, the plane is in second place. Electric cars are better still. Long distance buses can get 12mpg, so when full utterly destroy planes for efficiency.
The only times buses lose are (a) when in a country that does shit buses s
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Have to figure in the trip to the airport compared to the trip to the bus depot as well. Wife took the bus about 300 miles recently, 10 miles to the bus depot and another 8 at the other end. Airport would have been 30 miles and 40 miles, doubled as she got driven at both ends. Travel time including screwing around at the airport was about the same.
the real question (Score:2)
but can it melt steel beams?!
OK, now if they can explain... (Score:2)
... how they can actually produce enough of that to power a noticable number of planes, they might call it sustainable. Unfortunately this is probably just some "Synthfuel" project that would, if implemented on a large scale, multiply our total demand for electricity.
PR Crap - Jet Turbines and used oil (Score:1)
TL;DR -
A turbine engine [snip] and typically can run on any combustible fuel including Diesel, Jet A, Jet B, cooking oil, etc. There is no press release needed here except to say "Richard Branson ... VIrgin... jet engine... ran on fuel... that jet engines run on."
Great. The only real "achievement" here is governmental agreement to allow a pax-free flight of length to test this out. If you think THAT is important, think again. Tests on the ground have run engines on these fuels for DAYS not hours with no
Re: PR Crap - Jet Turbines and used oil (Score:2)
Turbines can run on a lot of crap but it doesnt mean it does them any good. Waste cooking oil has a small percentage of water in it. Not what you want in fuel lines at 30K feet and -60C. It can also have other minor components such as acids. Getting the picture?
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Probably why he mentioned,
, the expensive and nasty process of cleaning it up, and then using it as turbine fuel.
"Sustainable" like.. (Score:2)
Such headlines make me skeptical (Score:1)