Iberia Airlines launched, last week, Spain’s first commercial flight using a biofuel. The Iberia Airbus A320 flew from Madrid to Barcelona, burning a mixture of conventional A-1 jet fuel and a biofuel synthesized with the use of a plant the Spanish call camelina sativa.
The Iberia Airbus A320. Photo courtesy of Airliners.net.The airbus needed no modifications to burn the mixture of second-generation biofuel.
In other parts of the world, the plant is also known as linseed dodder, German sesame, and Siberian oilseed. It’s native to northern Europe and to central Asia, but has also been introduced to North America.
A lot of the camelina plant’s appeal as a biofuel is that it needs little water or nitrogen to flourish. It can be grown on marginal agricultural lands and does not compete with food crops.
Repsol, the Spanish oil company that provided the fuel, said that the fuel’s characteristics were identical to those of conventional aviation fuel, with a 25 percent content of biofuel made from the plant.
Repsol blended and distributed the fuel, which was produced by Honeywell-UOP. Iberia estimated that using the fuel mixture resulted in a reduction of nearly 1,500 kgs of CO2 emissions.
Iberia also said that part of its environmental plan is to replace part of its long-haul fleet with up to 16 new Airbus A330s, powered by newer fuel-efficient engines than can reduce CO2 emissions by 15 percent compared to those produced by the Airbus 340s now in operation.
Iberia also recently signed an agreement with the Spanish Air Traffic Control and Air Safety Services agency (SENASA) and Airbus to work together to create an infrastructure in Spain for the development of sustainable and renewable aviation biofuels for commercial use.
Isaias Taboas, Spain’s transport secretary of state, said in a statement that the country’s goal is to “reduce our dependency on fossil energy, make our companies more competitive by reducing costs associated to CO2, and create value and wealth in other sectors of our national economy.”
The Spanish government wants to “bring together farmers, oil refiners, and airlines to spearhead the commercialization of sustainable biofuel production,” said Taboas.
These initiatives come on Germany’s heals. In July, Lufthansa, Germany’s flag carrier and one of Europe’s largest airlines, launched the world’s first ever daily Airbus A321 commercial flights using a biofuel.
The four return daily flights between Hamburg and Frankfurt were the first in the world to use a biofuel blend of 50 percent Hydro-processed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA). The biofuel was provided Neste Oil, based in Finland.
Lufthansa said that daily flights would continue for six months as part of its “Burn Fair” research project to study the long term impact of sustainable biofuels on aircraft performance.
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