We have just completed a series of posts to do with Sustainable Aviation Fuels. The conclusions (from Sustainable Aviation Fuels: Realities) are:
The concept of economical, mass air travel is new. It started around in the 1960s, and has grown rapidly since then.
The economics of the civil aviation business depend on the energy density of Jet Fuel A (kerosene). However, the combustion of jet fuel creates unacceptably high carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
SAFs, the potential replacements for Jet A. They have been successfully used when blended with Jet A on commercial flights. However, drawbacks to its use are poor economics, the need for enormous amounts of land (SAFs are biofuels), scale, and the emissions associated with the manufacturing of SAFs.
Given these challenges, the future of mass air travel in its current form would seem to be in doubt.
The civil aviation industry is not the only type of transportation that faces profound structural challenges if it is to meet Net Zero goals. The commercial shipping business is also a major emitter of greenhouse gases. This industry is investing heavily in methanol as a replacement for the bunker fuels and diesel that it currently uses. The article Astrid Maersk arrives in Shanghai for first green methanol bunkering in China shows that progress is being made with regard to bunkering this new fuel.
As time permits, we will start a series of articles to do with methanol as a fuel, similar to what we did for SAFs.
