Aviation giant, Boeing, has found an innovative use for the nation's unwanted cooking oil.
Boeing's 777-200LR Worldliner Image: Boeing Photo |
A new technology centre, funded by Boeing and the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC is to research the use of waste cooking oil as aviation biofuel. The collaborative effort hopes to transform the unwanted “gutter oil”, which was widely recycled for low quality cooking oil, into biofuel for the nation's fast-growing aviation industry.
The Boeing-COMAC Technology Centre, located in the new Beijing Aeronautical Science and Technology Research Institute, was founded to research sustainable aviation biofuels and research air traffic management to improve aviation efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. Cooking oil, according to the partners, shows great potential as biofuel, as China consumes 29 million tonnes of food oils annually, compared to the 20 million tonnes of jet fuel used by the aviation industry.
Last year, Boeing, Honeywell and Air China jointly developed a biofuel derived from oil extracted from the Jatropha tree nut, which was used to power a 747-400 for a test flight around the nation's capital, Beijing. The Air China plane used a mixture of half-biofuel half-avgas for its two-hour long test flight, and, according to Air China VP He Li, was “a milestone for the Chinese aviation industry.”