Results announced
Continental Airlines announced the results of its Jan. 7, 2009, biofuel demonstration flight, which was conducted in partnership with Boeing, GE Aviation/CFM International, and Honeywell’s UOP. The biofuel blend performed as well as or better than traditional jet fuel, displaying an approximately 1.1 percent increase in fuel efficiency over traditional jet fuel in different stages of the demonstration flight.
Overall life cycle greenhouse gas emissions related to using a biofuel of the nature used on the Continental demonstration flight are estimated to be reduced by 60 percent to 80 percent as compared to traditional jet fuel.
“We are pleased with the successful results of Continental’s biofuel demonstration flight,” said Leah Raney, Continental’s managing director of global environmental affairs. “We look forward to working with our partners as biofuels go through the certification process, and we hope to see these fuels produced in commercial quantities in the near future.”
The Continental flight was the first biofuel demonstration flight by a commercial carrier in North America. The flight was also the first of its type to use a two-engine aircraft and fuel partially derived from algae.
During the approximately 90-minute flight, Continental test pilots successfully engaged the aircraft – a Boeing 737-800 equipped with CFM International CFM56-7B engines – in a number of flight maneuvers, such as mid-flight engine shutdown and re-start, and power accelerations and decelerations.
The aircraft’s first engine operated on 100 percent traditional jet fuel and the second engine operated with a biofuel blend, consisting of 50 percent biologically-derived fuel and 50 percent traditional jet fuel. The two different engines allowed Continental to compare performance between using the biofuel blend and traditional fuel.