Nature and Biodiversity

The world's first commercial flight partly fuelled by recycled waste has crossed the Atlantic

Old airplanes, including Boeing 747-400s, are stored in the desert in Victorville, California March 13, 2015. Last year, there were zero orders placed by commercial airlines for new Boeing 747s or Airbus A380s, reflecting a fundamental shift in the industry toward smaller, twin-engine planes. Smaller planes cost less to fly than the stately, four-engine jumbos, which can carry as many as 525 passengers. Picture taken March 13, 2015. To match Insight AEROSPACE-JUMBO    REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson  - GF10000060637

The fuel takes waste gases from industrial factories and gives them a second life. Image: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Kristin Houser
Writer, Futurism
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Across The Pond

It’s not every day that the founder of an airline greets one of its planes upon touchdown.

But Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson had a reason to be on the tarmac after his airline’s Flight VS16 landed in London Thursday morning, fresh from a transatlantic journey from Orlando, Florida: It was the world’s first commercial flight partially powered by recycled waste.

Second Life

The fuel is the creation of California’s LanzaTech, which captures and converts carbon emissions from steel mills, oil refineries, and other manufacturing sites into fuels and chemicals using a proprietary process powered by microbes.

“This fuel takes waste, carbon-rich gases from industrial factories and gives them a second life so that new fossil fuels don’t have to be taken out of the ground,” said Branson in a press release.

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Fill ‘Er Up

LanzaTech’s fuel comprised just five percent of the jet fuel powering the Virgin Atlantic plane, but that figure could increase to 50 percent — in April, an organization that sets aviation industry fuel standards approved LanzaTech’s sustainable jet fuel for use as a 50/50 blend with traditional fossil fuels. Now that they know it works, airlines can now try using it in larger quantities.

LanzaTech believes it could meet 20 percent of the commercial aviation industry’s fuel demand using just the carbon it could capture from the world’s eligible steel mills. And considering air travel accounts for 2 to 3 percent of global CO2 emissions, this fuel could make a not-insignificant dent in the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere.

Image: Emission Reduction Targets for International Aviation and Shipping
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Related topics:
Nature and BiodiversityIndustries in DepthSustainable Development
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