Yesterday, Qatar Airways operated the first commercial passenger flight fueled by a mix of synthetic fuel made partially from natural gas. The aircraft, an Airbus A340-600 using Rolls-Royce Trent 556 engines, was fuelled by a roughly 50:50 blend of GTL kerosene and standard jet fuel, a mix that has won regulatory approval.

The six-hour flight from London to Doha used fuel supplied by a Shell gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant in Malaysia.

For Qatar, this is much more than just a clean-energy/alternative-energy demonstration as Shell and the state-owned Qatar Petroleum are building the world’s biggest GTL plant – the “Pearl GTL”. They expect to start producing “GTL kerosene” approved for use in jet fuel in early 2012.

When the Pearl GTL project is fully completed, it will process about 1.6 billion cubic feet a day of gas from Qatar’s giant North Field, the largest gas field in the world, into 140,000 barrels per day (bpd) of GTL products.

If you have been following this blog for a while, you probably know that we at FlyMiwok are very excited about the promise of synthetic fuels, and every day there seems to be another significant step taken in order to make this a reality. Certainly, the first commercial flight – with paying passengers on board – powered by a synthetic-fuel mix is a cause for celebration.

Gad Barnea – CEO – FlyMiwok, Inc.

We’ve been covering biofuels a lot on this blog but most of the coverage has been on its application to Jet Fuel – not AvGas. Our operators fly piston aircraft that use AvGas (100 low-lead, or 100LL) – so how would biofuels potentially apply to the operations of FlyMiwok’s operators?

Swift Enterprises Ltd., of West Lafayette, Ind. has engineered a fully renewable hydrocarbon-based fuel synthesized from biomass that has demonstrated performance equal to or better than 100LL aviation gasoline.

According to Swift’s website, the advantages of using Swift Fuel are substantial:

* Seamless replacement of 100LL (no engine modifications)

* 15% increase in range over 100LL (no oxygenates)

* 20% drop in pollutants over the current 100LL fuel

* 15% more volumetric energy than 100LL

* No need for stabilizers or additives

AviationWeek wrote a story about Swift in July making the point that

Since the use of lead was banned for road vehicles, general aviation aircraft comprise the largest domestic users of tetraethyl lead additive fuels and are responsible for 45% of the ambient air lead inventory. As a result, many groups are pushing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to eliminate 100LL altogether. Because of the lead content, plus the fuel’s relatively low production levels, it is expensive to produce, ship—it cannot be transported in pipelines—and store.

The article also mentions that

[the fuel] has undergone preliminary testing at the FAA William Hughes Technical Center, Atlantic City, N.J. Researchers there determined the new fuel had a motor octane number (MON) of 104.4, versus a 103.6 MON in 100LL purchased locally. When fed to Lycoming IO-540-K and TIO-540-J2BD engines, chosen for their high-octane demand, the SwiftFuel provided slightly better detonation performance than the 100LL, had an energy content that was 96.3% of the 100LL and produced greater than 98% of the power of 100LL. On a volume basis, the SwiftFuel also contained 13% more energy.

These are excellent results.

The company’s latest online presentation calls the new AvGas 100SF (as opposed to 100LL). It also claims that commercialization will start in Oct. 2009 with manufacturing starting in Oct. 2011.

Swift flew an RV-4 on a mix of 100LL and 100SF to Oshkosh’s EAA Airventure this year.

We’re very excited about Swift’s progress and hope that these projections will materialize as planned.

Gad Barnea – CEO – FlyMiwok, Inc. 

Right now it powers your margaritas. Soon it might power the airplane you’re flying.

According to an article in “The Australian”, an international team of bio-energy scientists and entrepreneurs is looking to produce bio-fuels from blue-green Agave Tequiliana plants in Queensland’s Burdekin region and other dry-climate locations around the globe. After convincing the Mexican authorities that the Agave-growing operation will not result in an “Australian tequila” competitor, they finally got the permission to plant, last July, 2500 Agave in Burdekin soil.

According to Don Chambers of Ausagave.

"We had to convince the Mexican government that we wouldn’t be going in opposition by growing the plant for tequila. It’s their ‘noble plant’. It took us a long time to gain their trust."

Joe Holtum – one of the scientists behind the project explains the uniqueness of the Agave as:

"They take up CO2 in the dark, when it’s cool, and so they don’t lose much water by evaporation. But, of course, the metabolic battery doesn’t have enough power to convert all the CO2 to sugars, so what they do is store it as malic acid in their succulent cells.

"In the daytime, when it’s hot, they close the little holes in their leaves, the stomata, so they’re not losing much water, and they break down the malic acid inside the leaves. They do photosynthesis under very high CO2 concentrations, so it’s really efficient."

Here’s Don Chambers take on the project:

…now just add a splash of lime and serve your biofuel on the rocks!

Gad Barnea – CEO – FlyMiwok, Inc.

‘Helioculture’ is a fascinating concept being pursued by Joule Biotechnologies of Cambridge, Mass. The company is in stealth mode and not much actual information is available about the plan, but the Boston Globe was able to get a glimpse into the process and the ‘designer’ organism that the company has developed.

According to the article, the organism developed by Joule is a green Jell-O-like substance that the company plans to put into specially designed solar panels. These panels will use sophisticated optical and thermal engineering to essentially ‘marinate’ the organism with brackish water and nutrients and – through some photosynthetic process – the organism will transform the energy and ‘sweat’ ethanol, hydrocarbons, and petroleum-based chemicals. They hope to be able to generate 20,000 gallons of SolarEthanol™ fuel and more than 13,000 gallons of SolarDiesel™ per year from every acre of solar converter panels.

As far as pricing, the company expects to deliver SolarFuel™ liquid energy at the energy equivalent of less than $50 per barrel for diesel and less than $75 per barrel for ethanol.

Algae could be powering the aircraft you’re flying pretty soon. There are currently over 50 companies focusing hundreds of millions of dollar on research (and presumably deodorant) harvesting the power in algae.

An CNN article recently discussed how a company called Synthetic Genomics is pursuing an approach called ‘tweaked metabolic pathways’ in algae (others have done similar work with engineered E.Coli and other sources). The company has received investment from ExxonMobil of up to $600 million last month to collaborate on R&D – and investment which, many believe, takes algae research to ‘prime time’.

As we’ve written here, algae was used in both JAL and Continental’s test flights earlier this year. Both times the tests were very successful.

There are still plenty of obstacles to overcome before biofuels – from algae or anything else – are a true alternative to the fuels currently running our aircraft engines – but the engine of innovation is definitely moving ahead full speed.

Gad Barnea – CEO – FlyMiwok, Inc.

Three days ago, the ASTM approved a Synthetic Jet Fuel Standard in a major step forward towards allowing turbine-powered aircraft access to environmentally friendly, cleaner, less price-volatile (but possibly more expensive) fuel. We join the rest of the aviation community and applaud this very exciting development that could potentially have deep ramifications for aviation and ties to the work Pratt & Whitney and other do in the area.

The aviation industry has been taking a very serious look at biofuels over the past couple of years for obvious reasons. So it was good to hear from the engine manufacturers themselves recently about their plans to make biofuels a real alternative in the near future.

In a recent interview for BusinessGreen.com, Dr Alan H Epstein, VP Technology and Environment at Pratt & Whitney discussed his views for biofuels in aviation.

The timelines are reassuring, they claim to be on track to certify a biofuel by 2011, working in tandem with GE and Boeing (i.e. 98% of the engine market), to get an engine to run on this certified biofuel.

The biofuel in focus right now is Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (SPK) which is essentially made out of vegetable oil and hydrogenated in an existing refinery. Dr. Epstein claims that it is better than conventional fuel in terms of particulates and allows for a more efficient engine design that could improve fuel efficiency by a couple of percentage points.

In fact the Japan Airlines demo flightlast January used 50% Jet-A and 50% SPK made from a mixture of Cannelina, jatropha and algae to successfully power one of the four Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines of a JAL-owned Boeing 747-300 aircraft.

Gad Barnea – CEO – FlyMiwok, Inc.

According to a press-release by EERC (Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota) a new renewable bio-fuel called JP-8 (Jet Propellant-8) was flown successfully over the Mojave desert in a rocket built by Flometrics, Inc. In fact, the rocket was able to reach 20,000 ft and speeds at just a hair below Mach-1 on this fully renewable fuel made from crop oils such as canola and soy-beans.

Gas 2.0 reports that EERC’s Carsten Heide claims that

this fuel is a flying fuel, and is 100% renewable and burns clean. It would open up the possibility to run 100% renewable, clean planes.

Also mentioned are EERC’s plans to build a plant capable of producing up to three million gallons per year.

Check out the high-speed video below to appreciate just how clean the burn of this new bio-fuel can be.