Biomass Airplane Fuel

By Court Rye on July 12, 2008 2:58 AM | Comments (0)

Swift Enterprises is a company focused on making piston style aircraft perform better... while reducing their environmental impact, in that order. They accomplish this by using biomass instead of traditional dirty fuels with lead additives. Piston style airplanes (anything besides jets basically) require Tetraethyl Lead in their motor fuels in order to reach a high octane. The downside to using lead in gasoline is that it pollutes the environment, and yet until now there have been very few alternatives.

Swift Enterprises has developed a process to create synthetic hydrocarbons using biomass which takes the place of refining crude oil. This process allows Swift Fuels to replace current leaded additives, increase the range of aircraft from 15 to 25%, drop pollutants by up to 20%, and produce 15% more energy all without the need for stabilizers. For an excellent rundown on more of the specifics of this operation check out this article at PBS.

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