Navy F/A-18 Feeds on Biofuel
The commercial airline industry has been making test flights with alternate fuels and more specifically Biofuels. Now it is the turn of the military and the US Navy have just flown a F/A-18 partially powered by Biodiesel.
The aircraft appropriately named the Green Hornet made a 45 minute test flight powered by a mixture of 50% conventional jet fuel and 50% biofuel. Engineer for the test flight are pleased with the results and the aircraft performed as expected.
The biodiesel used is based on a plant from the cabbage family called Camellia and is not used as a food source so you wont have the military stealing the food from your plate to power their fighters.
The company manufacturing the fuel is Sustainable Oils based in Montana and have been commissioned to produce 40 thousand gallons of the biofuel for the Navy at a cost of US$2.7 million. That`s quite a large amount on the gas meter and it appears there is a lot of testing going to be done.
The military may appear to be “going green” and have embraced many projects in alternate and renewable energy. Many military bases are now home to large arrays of photovoltaic solar farms. Their drive here is security rather than “greenity”. The military is driven by the need to have a secure supply of energy both for their base operations and for their vehicles. Having an aircraft powered by green fuel is still an aircraft that will drop bombs and unless the bombs are made from flowers then the result is still warfare.
With biofuels, specifically those based on plants there is the need for them to be grown and this can often take away valuable space from food crops or animal feed and is not an ideal solution. For an alternate fuel that is not based on petroleum then the idea should be perused but this direction is surely to cause more problems in the long run of a different kind.
Plant fuel is not a dead end. There are other areas of exploration such as algae based fuels. These would be grown in large vats of nutrients and should not take up valuable crop growing land. Each source of fuel is going to bring its own problems such as problems of freezing at high altitudes or lifetime before the fuel starts to degrade.
Ideally the solution is for cutting back on energy usage and a reduction of the militaries around the world. The massive hurdle standing in our way is governments and sometimes it easier to reason with a cabbage than a politician.
Inage: via wikimedia
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