Industrial crops | Commercial test flight uses biojet fuel made from carinata and camelina
A few firsts have either been achieved or are on the horizon for biojet fuel made from two new Canadian oilseed crops.
On April 17, Porter Airlines conducted the first commercial flight in Canada using a blend of biofuel and regular jet fuel.
The following day, Agrisoma Biosciences Inc. announced the first comprehensive testing program for biojet fuel made from its Resonance brand of carinata, one of the new industrial oilseed crops.
The program, operated by the National Research Council Canada, will be the first flight in the world to conduct airborne emissions testing of biojet fuel.
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The Porter Airlines flight transported passengers from the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport to the Ottawa International Airport on one of its Bombardier Q400 turboprops with a blend of biojet fuel and regular jet fuel.
One engine ran on fuel made from a blend of camelina (49 percent) and carinata (one percent), while the other engine was powered by regular jet fuel.
The carinata used to make the fuel was grown in Kincaid, Sask., during the summer of 2011. The camelina was produced in Saskatchewan in 2010.
The crops were crushed , producing oil that was converted into biojet fuel by Honeywell UOP.
Scott Johnson, president of Sustainable Oils, which contracted the camelina production, said the flight demonstrates there is a viable Canadian market for two new Canadian crops.
“I think that’s a huge step,” he said.
However, his company won’t contract camelina production in Canada this year because there is no market for the meal in this country. Instead, the company is focusing on the U.S. market.
Saskatchewan Agriculture and the University of Saskatchewan are attempting to get regulatory approval for using the meal for feed, which could pave the way for camelina contracts as early as next spring.
Steve Fabijanski, president of Agrisoma Biosciences Inc., which provided the carinata for the biojet fuel used in the test flight, said the flight demonstrates there is a market for the oilseed.
Agrisoma’s Resonance carinata has gone from the lab to the field to the fuel tank of a plane in a little more than one year, demonstrating the strong demand for renewable fuel in the airline industry.
The company has contracted 6,000 acres of carinata production with 40 growers in Saskatchewan and Alberta in 2012.
“The farmers will have some place to move their grain. There will be an end market for this,” said Fabijanski.
The remainder of the carinata biojet fuel, which was made from 50 acres of seed planted in 2011, will be used to fuel an NRC research aircraft that will be testing emissions from various carinata fuel blends.
A modified Falcon 20 twin-engine jet will test the fuel. A T-33 jet chase plane equipped to measure in-flight emissions will follow closely behind.
“This will be the first in-flight, real-time testing of biofuel emissions at the exhaust pipe,” said Fabijanski.
He hopes the results will confirm earlier findings of a 70 to 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the fuel blend.
Fabijanski said the airline industry is a fabulous customer because it is a large consumer of fuel and has created self-imposed biofuel mandates that won’t be subject to political whims.
The International Air Transport Association and numerous airlines have set a goal of being carbon neutral by 2020.
The U.S. air force and navy want half of their fuel to come from biofuel sources by the same year.
Johnson said more than 80 percent of the camelina that Sustainable Oils has contracted since 2009 has been made into biojet fuel.
“We’ve been the primary supplier of renewable jet fuel to the U.S. military,” he said.
The U.S. military has recently come under fire in the media for paying several times more for its biofuel than its petroleum-based fuel.
However, Johnson said the price of biojet fuel will come down as production of crops such as camelina and carinata rises.
