Thursday, May 17, 2012

Grown in Saskatchewan, flown in Ottawa: NRC aircraft test oilseed-based fuel in search for a cleaner alternative to traditional jet fuel

 
Dave Marcotte, Group Leader Airborne Research, Aerospace National Research Council Canada with a Falcon 20 that is a test aircraft. The NRC is working with an Ottawa company called Agrisoma, to test ethanol. A T33 is the chase aircraft that is equipped with various instruments to sample the exhaust emissions from the Falcon 20 during flight. Photograph by: Pat McGrath, The Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — The skies over Ottawa are rumbling with the sound of a mid-sized business jet that’s being propelled primarily by jet fuel made from seeds grown in Saskatchewan farmers’ fields. 

With the help of Ottawa’s Agrisoma Biosciences Inc., researchers from the National Research Council are testing bio-jet fuel in a Dassault Falcon 20 executive jet. The fuel, which is made up of more than 50 per cent ethanol, is produced by Agrisoma from seeds derived from the Ethiopian mustard plant Brassica carinata.

The NRC has offered up the Falcon 20 and a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star chase plane, running on traditional petroleum-based jet fuel, from its hangar at the Ottawa airport.

The experiment could result in a more sustainable jet fuel for the world, and bring additional revenues to Prairie farmers.

The project is a collaboration among Agrisoma, the NRC, Honeywell UOP Inc. and Saskatoon’s Genome Prairie-led Prairie Gold project.

Brassica carinata is drought- and heat-tolerant and can be grown in areas not suited for canola, said Mejda Lortie, Agrisoma’s director of regulatory and government affairs.

The company’s variety of the plant, branded Resonance, is an oil feedstock that was grown near Kincaid, Sask., in the summer of 2011.

“It is a tough cookie,” she said. “It can grow in poorer soils or soil that doesn’t have the characteristics that would support, for example, canola production.”

Agrisoma Biosciences was founded in 2002 as a spinoff of Chromos Molecular Systems Inc. of Burnaby, B.C., and specializes in altering the genes of various oilseeds to create crops that are heartier and yield more oil. The company’s chief executive, Steven Fabijanski, has more than 20 years of experience in agricultural technologies.

Doug Heath, project manager with Genome Prairie, said Brassica carinata and another plant, Camalina sativa, are being developed specifically for industrial uses.

Both are oilseeds and non-food crops, which is important because many have criticized companies for using edible food crops to make ethanol. Using a food crop to make fuel has several disadvantages, not the least of which is driving up the cost of grains, such as corn, because of demand from the fuel industry.

“The goal is to grow both of these crops down in the Palliser Triangle area where traditionally canola wasn’t always a guaranteed crop,” Heath said. “Even though right now it takes a few more days to mature compared to canola, that’s fine down in southern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta.

Heath hopes to use the oilseeds to produce a more eco-friendly fuel.

The aviation industry the world over is seeking alternatives to traditional carbon-based fuel. Qantas Airlines recently launched Australia’s first commercial flight using a 50/50 mixture of regular fuel and refined cooking oil. And Canada’s Porter Airlines flew a Bombardier Q400 powered by an oilseed-based fuel from Toronto to Ottawa last month in what Porter said was the country’s first biofuel-powered passenger flight.

The current test flights, conducted in partnership with the NRC with funding from the Government of Canada’s Clean Transportation Initiatives, will evaluate the Resonance-based biojet fuel under a number of flight conditions to provide the world’s first ever real-time, inflight emissions measurements for a biojet fuel.

The tests are being done in the modified Dassault Falcon 20 twin-engined jet using a 50/50 blend of carinata jet fuel and petroleum-based fuel. The classic Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star chase plane, originally manufactured in 1948, has been equipped to measure inflight emissions while flying. The T-33 will monitor emissions in real time, at altitude.

“It’s not just a jet engine on the ground making extrapolations on,” Heath said. “It’s actually measuring what’s coming out of the jet as it’s flying.”

“We all assume there is a reduction in greenhouse gases emissions, but nobody has really measured it in the atmosphere,” Lortie added. “This program is the first one that will using our jet fuel will be able to measure the emissions during a flight.”

The test flights are expected to be completed by early June and researchers will then analyse the results.

If they get positive findings, Lortie said they will be looking to scale up production in the coming years.

“It is expanding the portfolio of some growers, especially in the southern parts of Saskatchewan, giving them an alternative to leaving their land on fallow,” she said.

Postmedia News and Citizen staff

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com

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