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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday November 15 2016, @08:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest-can-i-join-the-mile-high-club dept.

Washington state-based Alaska Airlines today made history flying the first commercial flight using the world's first renewable, alternative jet fuel made from forest residuals, the limbs and branches that remain after the harvesting of managed forests.

The fuel used a 20 percent blend of sustainable aviation biofuel.

While 20% doesn't seem like much (it's still 80% aviation fuel), if the airline were able to replace 20 percent of its entire fuel supply at Sea-Tac Airport (from which it took off), it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 142,000 metric tons of CO2. This is equivalent to taking approximately 30,000 passenger vehicles off the road for one year.


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  • (Score: 1) by Delwin on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:51PM

    by Delwin (4554) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:51PM (#427523)

    If you don't take care of the forest it will burn down on you - taking out cities on the way. Worse if you don't clean up after the fire then the next fire that comes through will take all those dead trees and turn them into thousand hour logs... and kill the ground. After that you can't replant because the ground won't support trees anymore and all you've got left is scrubland.

    Taking care of the forest gives you much higher biodiversity, more habitat for a larger range of creatures, and a much healthier biosphere. It also results in trimmings that you can do a very limited number of things with. In order of preference:

    You can burn them (really bad idea, see above).
    You can mulch them (potential fire risk, also not economical).
    You can cart them off to a biofuel plant (if there's one close enough. They've been closing recently)
    You can turn them into jet fuel (New option - one I'll be looking at closely).

    If you can turn it into jet fuel at a profit then bonus! If you can turn it into jet fuel at a small loss (less than the cost to mulch it) then also bonus!

  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday November 17 2016, @02:08AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Thursday November 17 2016, @02:08AM (#427920) Journal

    In pre-Columbian times, people in South America made charcoal, also known as biochar, and added it to the soil. Those soils are still fertile today. The process has been advocated as a way to keep the carbon in vegetable matter from returning to the atmosphere.