I’ve never much thought there was much usefulness to waste vegetable oil used for automobile fuel, as there is a much more finite amount of waste frying oil available compared to petroleum. Ditto for chicken fat powered aviation. Would you want to fly on a plane that is chicken fat powered? Personally, it seems clucking ridiculous.
I just wish NASA would stick to space exploration.
Chicken Fat Fuel Emissions Look Cleaner, Greener
An emissions detection rake device is positioned behind the No.3 engine on NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory during ground tests of an alternative jet fuel made from chicken and beef tallow. (NASA / Tom Tschida) NASA recently performed emissions testing on alternative, renewable fuels for a greener and less petroleum-dependent future. The search for alternative fuels is driven by environmental concerns as well as a desire for reduced reliance on foreign sources.
“Renewable” means that the fuel source isn’t some form of fossil fuel. The source could be algae, a plant such as jatropha, or even rendered animal fat. In late March and early April 2011, a team at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in California tested renewable biofuel made from chicken and beef tallow in one of the four engines of a DC-8 airplane.
The airplane remained on the ground during the test, known as the Alternative Aviation Fuels Experiment, or AAFEX, while aeronautics researchers measured the fuel’s performance in the engines and examined the engine exhaust for chemicals and contamination that could contribute to air pollution. It was the first test ever to measure biofuel emissions for nitrogen oxides, commonly known as NOx, and tiny particles of soot or unburned hydrocarbon – both of which can degrade air quality in communities with airports. NOx contributes to smog and particulate matter contributes to respiratory and cardiovascular ailments.
“The test results seem to support the idea that biofuels for jet engines are indeed cleaner-burning, and release fewer pollutants into the air. That benefits us all,” said Ruben Del Rosario of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio. Del Rosario manages NASA’s Subsonic Fixed Wing Project, which sponsored the experiment through the agency’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program.
View full size photoResearchers check out emissions detection equipment set up behind NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory during ground tests of alternative biofuels derived from animal fats at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif. (NASA / Tom Tschida) The team ran one engine using Hydrotreated Renewable Jet Fuel, or HRJ, and another engine using Jet Propellant 8, or JP-8, fuel, which is very similar to the industry standard Jet-A fuel used in commercial aircraft. They also ran one engine using a 50-50 blend of the two fuels.
The experiment’s chief scientist, Bruce Anderson of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, said that in the engine that burned the biofuel, black carbon emissions were 90 percent less at idle and almost 60 percent less at takeoff thrust. Anderson added that the biofuel also produced much lower sulfate, organic aerosol, and hazardous emissions than the standard jet fuel. Researchers will spend the next several months comparing the results and drawing conclusions.
The recent test came a little more than two years after the same team used the same airplane to test two synthetic, or man-made, fuels derived from coal and natural gas. Researchers found that the synthetic fuels significantly reduced particulate emissions at all engine power settings and also saw some smaller reductions in gaseous emissions at certain engine operating conditions.
“NASA Dryden was excited to contribute to the study of alternative fuels for aviation use,” said Frank Cutler, NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory project manager. “The results of these tests will tell us a lot about emissions generated by modern turbine aircraft engines using these fuels,” Cutler said.
The test setup involved positioning the DC-8 at Dryden’s Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., surrounded by ground support equipment, emissions sensors, and test equipment trailers to house the researchers and observers.
The AAFEX tests in 2009 and this year were funded through NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in Washington.
The experiments included investigators and consultants from private industry, other federal organizations, and academia. In all, 17 government, industry and academic organizations participated in the recent test.
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I hate to be pedantic (well, I love to really), but “much more finite’ is nonsensical. ‘Finite’, like ‘unique’ is one of those absolute thingies, it either is, or it is not.
“Would you want to fly on a plane that is chicken fat powered?”
Fat lambs could be next on the list for “renewable” fuel. But are lambs really “renewable”?
I can see so many funny comments being made, especially regarding the chickens (chickens per mile?). I am at a loss to think of a good one right now, though, which annoys me!
“…chickens flying all over the plane…”
😉
All of that just to find out that synthetic fuels that have no sulphur in them have lower emissions of … sulphates…
Take any fat or plant oil. Dump it through the hydrotreater at your local refinery. Crack or reform as needed to get the length chain desired. Put in turbine… just like any other naphtha, kerosene, or light oil… because it IS just like any other.
If you do the “home brew” style and make an ester out of it, it’s just like the regular stuff only with a higher melting point (so not as good at cold high altitudes unless you turn on the fuel tank heaters). It’s a little oxygenated too. That’s about it.
All known at least a decade ago.
So why are these clowns being paid to do all this to show what’s already known?
or even rendered animal fat
Won’t be allowed, unless they can get the fat without killing Chicken Little or Ferdinand the Bull.
How will this idea get past the lentil munching sock and sandal wearing looney vegans?
Regardless of emmisions, any alternative has to be able to be produced in enough bulk to actually BE an alternative.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, this needs to be produced without affecting world food supplies.
I am all for using whatever WASTE materials we can to produce fuels, but at the moment I can forsee a solid possibility of problems arising from the use of food growing land for providing biofuel. Unfortunately, once it becomes more financially profitable to produce fuel than food, poorer countries could easily find themselves with deep shortages of food. One way to force population decreases, I suppose. 🙁
….the source could be algae, a plant such as jatropha, or even rendered animal fat…..
Yeah, and pigs might fly.
How much energy will be required to turn all this bird fat into dependable fuel for airplanes? BTW, isn’t fat a hydrocarbon and won’t it produce CO2 just like JP4? Also, just think of the fun we’ll have hunting whales for their blubber again.
@Andy G55:
There is no shortage of food in the world. Starvation is all about distribution, not production, and is usually limited by political issues, not economic ones. For example, the southern Sudanese who where starving to death for a few years. UN was ready to deliver food. North Sudan would not let them. North Sudan had the money and guns, south sudan did not. Oh, and the north was Muslim while the south was Christian…
The classic problem in agriculature is excess production crashing prices. Still is.
FWIW, there are many tons of used cooking oil (UCO in the vernacular) that go to land fills every year. Better to put it in engines… Better still to just drill Alaska and use real petroleum…
Anthony, NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This is part of what they do, when they were still NACA they helped build the X-1, X-3, X-4 and X-5 test beds. And NASA got involved again with the X-24, X-29, X-30, X-36, X-48 and the X-53. These are all clearly aircraft testbeds, with a few having potential space applications (I’ve left out the projects that were dedicated space test beds).
Even today they use aircraft to test for example aerodynamics. It’s not something that gets a lot of headlines, but it has always been a part of their research.
So your comment of “I just wish NASA would stick to space exploration” misses the mark a bit.
All of the Earth, including the USA, is full of oil and gas accumulated during the planetary formation. It is simply a layer of lighter than metals and molten rock material floating on top of the magma.
Hydrocarbons are the most ubiquitous compounds in the Universe. Atmospheres and underlying oceans of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, not to mention some of their moons as large as Titan, are made mostly of hydrocarbons. Barring rare anomalies (where volcanic activity brings magma to the surface, and where collision of tectonic plates squeezes oil and gas to the sides) there is an global ocean of hydrocarbons beneath our feet.
Unfortunately, practically all parties involved in oil and gas production and taxation — totalitarian socialists (a.k.a. “environmentalists”), oil-exporting corrupt regimes, large corporations in cahoots with governments, refiners, distributors, futures traders and, of course, the Academia, slavishly kowtowing to these sponsors — are vitally interested in high oil prices.
Hence the “peak oil” scaremongering and “biogenic oil” pseudo-scientific dogma: we are being had, as usual since before the Pyramids were built.
Did they say if it smells better than aviation spirit?
Interesting to see what happens when this “flying laboratory” actually, well, flies.
What happens to beef tallow when it gets really cold?
Ninety years ago (and no, I don’t remember it myself), on the West Coast of Africa, a ship was a Steam Canoe and a lorry was a Steam Horse. Later, an aircraft was (and still is to some of us) a Steam Chicken.
Will a beef tallow Boeing 747 be welcome, flying into Delhi?
How about a Pork fat burning plane heading into Riyadh or Tehran?
Might be interesting.
Could a vegetarian fly on an animal fat-fuelled plane?
@E.M.Smith says:
Yep, At the moment there is plenty of food capacity, just distribution balance issues.
I am just concerned that the climate hysteria may preclude people in control actually considering that food supply is an issue.
ps.. guys.. CHICKENS DON’T FLY !!!
No fossil fuels were used in the feeding, rearing, rending and transportation of said chickens.
/disclaimer
Put a big funnel under each windmill, the windmills will kill the birds which drop in to the funnel, then into a pot of boiling water heated by the electricity from the windmill. Then draw off the fat using a series of gravity drip tubes like in a Maple sugar forest to a final filtering station and then put it in drums and ship it to NASA. Cheaper than batteries faster than turpentine.
Free energy!
Christopher Hanley says: April 26, 2011 at 11:56 pm
“….the source could be algae, a plant such as jatropha, or even rendered animal fat…..”
Yeah, and pigs might fly.
Finally, a use for all that jatropha growing in my yard.
I guess we could use pig fat. I suggest trying it in Air Force One.
You could tell when the Prez is in town, because the whole airport would smell like bacon.
That might make him unwelcome in muslim countries, though.
What’s the matter, don’t these guy have any real scientific endevour to pursue?
Wasting their time on such inconsequential rubbish surely qualifies them for the much sought after NASA award (Not A Scientist’s Ar****le).
How many chickens must you cold press to get enough virgin Gaia friendly oil to run a 747 for one 24 hour flight schedule? Goodbye KFC.
Why are NASA wasting money rehashing old science? Everything in this article has been known for decades.
There are rumours that NASA scientists are working to perfect this round thing they have invented which makes it real easy to move stuff around, but they can’t quite decide on a name for it – roundie is the favourite right now. Oh, yeah, and they think it might work better if the periphery of the ’roundie’ was cushioned by fitting a round rubber boot sole sorta thing. They’re working on it right now, and they envision a whole raft of great inventions to go with it. Like stopper-things, and shaft-through-the-middle-to-rotate-on thingies, up-and-down-suspender things, there will be no end to the amazing stuff they can come up with.
Sheesh! 🙂
A friend of mine has got an old Land Rover which has an equally ancient Cummins diesel engine. He runs it on a mix of about 30% diesel fuel and 70% vegetable oil. The vegetable oil is usually waste oil from fish and chip shops (smells great when he drives by!) but he also uses new oil. New vegetable oil from the shops costs around 94 pence per litre, diesel fuel is now over 140 pence per litre at the pumps.
The only problem which my friend has is that it is illegal here in the UK to fuel your vehicle in this way. Why? Because the tax man is not getting his cut by way of the exorbitant taxes levied on motor fuels.