We’ve heard people talk about biofuels for quite awhile now, and algae has always been promoted as one of the best possible hopes for mass production. It’s renewable and it doesn’t take from existing food supplies. But will we actually be seeing algae-powered airplanes in the near future? Probably not. I spoke with OriginOil President and CEO Riggs Eckelberry about the state of algae oil product, and it was a really interesting discussion.

The use of algae oil as fuel is not just hype. It has been proven that it can be done, and according to Riggs, it has a “fairly compact footprint.” Part of the issue until now has been figuring out the best way to extract the oil.

In Riggs’ words, in the current process, “they literally cook the water out. It takes a huge amount of energy to do that. Eventually it turns into a 10% water content which is an extremely dry meal. Then they combine it with hexane to extract the oil.”

So it takes a lot of energy and the use of chemicals to get anything done, and that’s not exactly a sustainable process. OriginOil’s process is different in that it separates the lipids from the biomass and then the algae sinks to the bottom while the oil sits on top of the water. You can see a time-lapsed video of this happening on their website.

They don’t need any chemicals or energy to do this. All they need is a ton of water, which presents problems of its own. At least the water can be reused. After the process is complete, the water simply has to be refiltered and it can be used again and again with limited loss in the process. They’ve also found that you can harvest a certain amount out of a batch every day and it grows back by the next day. Right now, they can pull out about 12.5% per day.

So, now that the processes are improving, can we use this on airplanes? I doubt it. Riggs gave me some numbers to put things in perspective. Let’s say you have 1 acre. On that acre, you probably will have about 40% of it as actual tank capacity for growing. In that environment, you will turn out about 63,000 gallons per year for that acre. How many airplanes can that power?

It’ll keep a 747 in the air for about 18 hours. That’s it.

So at this point, you need a LOT of land to power a fleet of aircraft. It’s just not feasible right now. But there are plenty of other uses that are good for algae and that can help take some demand out for petroleum. Things like specialty chemicals and health foods can work very well.

Riggs was certainly up front about this. “It’s not a very pretty picture. The best the industry has reported, and some are skeptical, is $8 per gallon of oil and some people think it’s more like $12 or $14. It’s still very, very high.”

There is some good news, however. Costs can come down significantly in environments where the right conditions already exist: wastewater treatment plants. Think about it – a ton of water flows through wastewater plants every day, and they can grow algae while that’s going on. Then the cost is very low for production, but again, the quantities won’t power the airline industry.

In Riggs’ mind, we’re probably about 5 years out from having a sustainable algae oil industry, but he’s confident we’ll get there. In order to get algae to power airplanes on a large scale, there’s a lot left to do.

Though the ultimate reason for the Air France A330 crash in the South Atlantic will likely never be known for sure, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has recently issued an urgent Airworthiness Directive to replace certain Thales-manufactured pitot tubes on A330/A340 airplanes. A pitot tube problem is one of the possible explanations for that Air France crash.

For those who don’t know, a pitot tube is a goofy little thing that sticks out from the aircraft into the air. You can see a great example of one at left. These little guys use pressure measurement to determine airspeed. One of the theories regarding the Air France accident is that the pitot tube incorrectly measured airspeed and that triggered all kinds of problems that ultimately led to the accident.

Now, EASA is saying that any A330/A340 aircraft with the Thales pitot tubes need to be changed (and the FAA has followed as well). There are apparently two different types of Thales pitot tubes. The “AA” version must be replaced no matter what. The “BA” version is ok in one place, but the other two places must have Goodrich ones involved.

So what exactly is the problem? According to EASA:

Occurrences have been reported on the A330/A340 family aeroplanes of airspeed indication discrepancies while flying at high altitudes in inclement weather conditions.

The Thales AA pitots have “a greater susceptibility to adverse environmental conditions” than the Goodrich ones. The Thales BA pitots are better, but “it has not yet demonstrated the same level of robustness to withstand high-altitude ice crystals as the Goodrich . . . probe.”

While they say that they haven’t actually found any safety issue and that this is a precautionary measure, the fact that these all need to be replaced within 4 months certainly makes it seem somewhat rushed.

By the way, Air France had Thales pitot tubes, but they’ve already made these changes. Delta has also already made the changes to their A330s. Both US Airways and Lufthansa have always had Goodrich.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neepster/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day, so there won’t be a post until Tuesday. The sun is just about to set here in LA, and that means it’s the beginning of Yom Kippur. So, I’ll be fasting for the day. For the first time, I’ll be breaking my fast on an airplane. I’m off to London tomorrow night and I’ll fly back on the new British Airways London City service at the end of the week.

My goal is to set posts to go live at the usual time while I’m gone, but I can’t guarantee it. I’ll be back on my normal schedule for sure next Monday. That’s when I’ll be launching a brand new business here that I hope many of you will be able to benefit from.

Be back here Tuesday . . .

July Premium Traffic Shows Gains – BNET
It’s premium traffic monitor time again, and traffic is still in the tank. But it’s not quite as bad, so that’s good.

Delta’s SkyClub Promotion Slightly Misses the Mark – BNET
Delta offered club access to some elite members for a day. Good idea, not great execution.

Guest Posts From My Favourite Bloggers : Brett Snyder – The Cranky Flier – Flying with Fish blog
I wrote a guest post for Fish about the recently announced V Australia/Emirates codeshare.

US Airways and Delta Raise More Money – BNET
Airlines are raising money left and right these days. Might as well do it while they can.

United Goes Back Into Mini-Expansion Mode Domestically – BNET
Don’t look now, but United has started adding new flights and new cities once again. That’s always encouraging, though I do wonder about some of these.

Virgin America’s Improved Second Quarter Performance Details – BNET
Now that the government data is out, we can take a look at Virgin America’s performance in greater detail. Not too bad, but there’s still work to do.

It looks like United and American have decided that you don’t pay enough to travel on the peak holiday travel days, so they’ve added a $10 surcharge. Is this a new fee? Nah, I think it’s just the lazy man’s fare increase.

You’re always used to paying more to travel on the holidays, right? Usually, this happens because airlines use inventory controls to make you pay a higher fare. So that $99 one way fare just won’t be available (well, ok, maybe on Virgin America). But now American has decided that still aren’t paying enough on certain days, and United has followed. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving and both the Saturday and Sunday after New Year’s, they’ve added a $10 surcharge to nearly all fares.

I’ve already seen some people wondering if this is a new fee that the airlines are starting to add, but really, I don’t see it that way. It’s simply a fare increase but instead of adding blackout dates to the existing fares and filing new fares at a higher level (which is kind of a pain), they just added a blanket surcharge to make things easier for them. Might as well do it this way – you get the same result for the most part.

The most important thing here is that you won’t see anything different as a traveler. When you price out your ticket, that surcharge will already be included, so it’s not a nickel-and-diming type of strategy here.

Airlines have used peak pricing for years. Remember the traditional Southwest $99 sales? Those were only good on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. The rest of the week was $119. The difference here is that it’s just much more specific, and they’ve used a different method for increasing the fare.

One extra benefit for the airlines is that surcharges normally get added on after discounts are taken, though I can’t imagine too many people are traveling on corporate discounts or anything like that on the peak holiday travel days. I really think it was just the easiest way to do a narrow fare increase.

I suppose the news here is that technically, this is a different way of doing things, but ultimately, it’s just a fare increase. Flights on those days are always packed, so they’re just going to try to squeeze some more revenue out while they can. I imagine we’ll see more of this in the future.