Boeing has completed the world’s first flight using “green diesel,” a sustainable biofuel made from vegetable oils, waste cooking oil and waste animal fats. The company powered its ecoDemonstrator 787 flight test airplane on Tuesday with a blend of 15 percent green diesel and 85 percent petroleum jet fuel in the left engine.
“Green diesel offers a tremendous opportunity to make sustainable aviation biofuel more available and more affordable for our customers,” said Julie Felgar, managing director of environmental strategy and integration, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “We will provide data from several ecoDemonstrator flights to support efforts to approve this fuel for commercial aviation and help meet our industry’s environmental goals.”
Boeing has found that green diesel’s chemical composition resembles that of HEFA (hydro-processed esters and fatty acids), an aviation biofuel approved in 2011. Widely available and used in ground transportation, green diesel carries chemical properties distinct from those of “biodiesel,” another fuel used in ground transportation.
With production capacity of 800 million gallons in the U.S., Europe and Asia, green diesel could rapidly supply as much as 1 percent of global jet fuel demand, according to Boeing. At wholesale cost of about $3 per gallon, including U.S. government incentives, green diesel approaches price parity with petroleum jet fuel, it added.
“The airplane performed as designed with the green diesel blend, just as it does with conventional jet fuel,” said Mike Carriker, chief pilot, product development and 777X, Boeing Test and Evaluation. “This is exactly what we want to see in flight tests with a new type of fuel.”
On a lifecycle basis, green diesel reduces carbon emissions by 50 to 90 percent compared with fossil fuel, according to Finland-based Neste Oil, which supplied green diesel for the ecoDemonstrator 787. Boeing coordinated the flight test with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney. Salem, Oregon-based EPIC Aviation blended the fuel.