Envirofuel - Promoting sustainable mobility

On 06 Mar 08 AeroVironment announced that it has flown its Puma small unmanned aircraft for over nine hours, powered by an on-board fuel cell battery hybrid energy storage system.

Filed under: Alternative fuel, Aviation, Hydrogen | Tagged: AeroVironment, fuel cell, Protonex Technology Corporation, Puma | No Comments »

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) called on Asia to play a leadership role in driving the aviation industry towards carbon neutral growth leading to a zero-emission industry. Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO imparted this message at the Greener Skies for Asia 2008 conference in Hong Kong.

Filed under: Alternative fuel, Aviation, Greenhouse gas | Tagged: IATA | No Comments »

The Australian is calling the Virgin Atlantic biofuel flight a “stunt”. The fact that a Virgin publicity exercise involving Richard Branson is being called a stunt shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone.

Filed under: Aviation, Biofuel, Rants | Tagged: Babassu, Boeing, Coconut, GE Aviation, Imperium Renewables, Virgin Atlantic | 5 Comments »

An Airbus A380 aircraft has successfully completed a flight with one of its four engines running on a blend of synthetic jet fuel and normal aviation fuel. The three hour flight from Filton in the UK to Toulouse, France, is the first in a test flight programme that is designed to evaluate the environmental impact of alternative aviation fuels.

Filed under: Alternative fuel, Aviation, Synthetic jet fuel | Tagged: A380, Airbus, Fischer-Tropsch, gas-to-liquids, GTL, Qatar GTL, Shell | 1 Comment »

Reuters are reporting that Virgin Atlantic will fly a Boeing 747 from Heathrow and Amsterdam next month to test biofuel. The Boeing 747 will fly without passengers and will likely only run one engine on the as yet unspecified biofuel.

Filed under: Aviation, Biofuel | Tagged: Boeing, GE Aviation, Virgin Atlantic | 1 Comment »

John Bakker, the man who bought us the Carver One is innovating again. This time he’s taken the Carver One, crossed it with a gyrocopter with folding rotor and propeller blades and come up with what he calls a Personal Air and Land Vehicle or PAL-V.

Filed under: Aviation, Technology | Tagged: Carver One, John Bakker, PAL-V | 1 Comment »

SAS Scandinavian Airlines have concluded Europe’s first commercial green approach trial with the arrival of an Airbus A330, from New York’s Newark airport at Stockholm Arlanda Airport on 08 December 2007. The trial has been testing what SAS call a Continuous Descent Approach (CDA). SAS is carrying out the CDA program with partners Stockholm-Arlanda airport, Airbus and the Swedish state-owned aviation service company LFV.

Filed under: Aviation, Fuel economy, Greenhouse gas | Tagged: Airbus, Boeing, LFV, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Stockholm-Arlanda | 3 Comments »

Diversified Energy Corportation and Velocys Inc. have been selected by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to design a transportable system that can convert waste products generated at military installations into 50 – 500 barrels per day of high performance renewable fuels such as diesel and aviation fuel.

Filed under: Alternative fuel, Aviation, Synthetic diesel, Synthetic jet fuel | Tagged: Alchemix Corporation, Diversified Energy Corporation, HydroMax, Velocys | 1 Comment »

A C-17 Globemaster III has flown using a blend of synthetic and JP-8 fuels in all four fuel tanks as part of the certification process for C-17 use. Fleet-wide certification is planned for the first quarter of 2008.

Filed under: Alternative fuel, Aviation, Synthetic jet fuel | Tagged: United States Air Force, C-17, Globemaster | 1 Comment »

A micro unmanned aerial vehicle has set a new micro‐UAV flight distance record of 128 km in Lancaster, California, exceeding the previous record set in 2006 in Estonia by 40km. Significantly, this flight record was achieved using only 25% of the hydrogen tank capacity stored on‐board the aircraft. On a full tank of fuel, the aircraft’s flying range is 500 km.

Filed under: Aviation, Hydrogen | Tagged: Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies | 2 Comments »