A Future without Planes:
In the article, “Cooking Oil Powers Qantas Aircraft,” it
talks about how conventional fuel costs are dramatically increasing. The
resources are being used up, so therefore the countries are charging us more to
purchase them. They know that we are dependent upon them. This is exactly what
aviation specialists want to avoid. In Australia, they paid $500,000 to try out
alternative fuels. As an experiment, they combined half conventional fuel with
half vegetable oil. Analyzing the flight, Tom Ballantyne said, “We know we can make
them, we know they're exactly the same as jet fuel and have absolutely no
impact on the operation of the aircraft.” This quote gives us hope that we can find
other resources that will eventually be cheaper to fuel engines with. Vegetable
oil just may be the perfect substitute.
ABC News, “Cooking Oil Powers Qantas Aircraft,” by
Tom Nightingale, Sun Apr 15, 2012
My take on this article is that
vegetable oil could be the key to a long future in aviation. Since fuel costs so much, aircraft companies have to charge us more in
order to make a profit. Overtime as resources become scarce, most people wont be able to afford the flights. Can you Imagine a future without planes?
If we do decide to go the route of vegetable oil, our infrastructure must be able to grow a lot of vegetables to keep up with the
demand. However, this competitive growing could be beneficial to us in many ways. It would
save us money on transportation. Also, using vegetable oil is much better for the environment. The intense crop growing could also provide more people with jobs. On the other hand,
it could also have some negative effects. Growing massive amounts of vegetables would
take up a lot of the land. It would suck all the nutrients right out of the
soil and cause the farmers to keep moving to new plots.Once the farmers run out of space they may result in deforestation.
I made a connection to this article
and the movie, "The Lorax." In the movie, it showed how the factory’s waste and gases
were very harmful to the environment. Eventually, everything was dead from them. I can connect
that since vegetable oil is cleaner, we can cut down on the pollution affects. This little difference could end up
saving an environment. If we take the step now, we won’t have to end up like
the Lorax's environment did.
In my opinion, this is a great way
to cut back on costs and pollution. Hopefully, we will be able to rely on vegetable oil to get us from place to place.
The idea sounds reasonable. As we are running out of our petroleum resources, we have to find a more sustainable way to power our homes and our cars, never mind our jets. However, you bring up a good point about the sustainability of using vegetable oil to power planes. If the demand increases for vegetable oil to fuel jets, food prices will most likely rise, and the food that was once available to developing countries and countries undergoing famines will probably be directed more towards fuel for planes. Overall, I think that other possible options that are more sustainable should be explored, such as using used vegetable oil from fast-food restaurants, as much of that oil is thrown out anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of using vegetable oil for fuel is certaintly not new, but the use of it for planes is an incredible innovation. I know that this has been previously used for cars and it works well. I wonder why its hasn't become more global though? I cannot think of any serious problems that vegetable oil would bring. You mention that it would be cheaper but it would also be better for the global economy and could stop some wars that are caused by petroleum. Remember that BP spill, both humans and aquatic lfe were killed. In this method something like that is less likely to happen because we can destory life to make or get vegetable oil. I realize that in these piece they are only using half vegetable oil but still if an alternative fuel source could be fully developed that would be better for us globally. This was a fantastic article. Good Job Mia!
ReplyDeleteGood job! I like how you saw both the good and the bad side of the idea. I think that vegetable oil would be a great substitute for petroleum. But, if you think about it, there really is no good substitute. For any source of fuel, the energy would have to come from somewhere. Like you mentioned, growing such large amounts of vegetables and plants would suck the nutrients right out of the soil. Eventually you wouldn't be able to farm there anymore because the soil wouldn't be fertile enough. This could cause more problems such as the deforestation that we see in places like Africa and large agricultural areas. I'm sure we could manage to find a problem with any energy source because, much like when playing sports, you need to get the energy from somewhere in order to utilize it. The largest question here is: where can we get the most cost effective, clean and efficient source of energy that would do what we need it to?
ReplyDeleteIt would be unfair to ask people to stop using energy like we do now because we have been using it for so long. But, if we continue to do what we have been doing, we will run out of energy and not know what to do because we are so used to what we have now, and we take everything for granted. Good job! I think you covered the topic well and also managed to raise an interest in where we are going with our energy usage right now.
I agree that trying out vegetable oil for airplane fuel may be a good start, and it will certainly decrease our dependence on foreign oil. However, companies that produce vegetable oil will see that it is being used by airlines as fuel, so, naturally, the companies will charge airlines more for vegetable oil. So, overall, I disagree in that I don't believe that this will make flying any cheaper. However, with the decreasing amount of fossil fuels in the world, other fuel sources are needed. Maybe we could use ethanol, a hydrogen fuel cell, or possibly electricity to power vehicles in the future. If or when we run out of fossil fuels, we will find a way to power our transportation, so I think a future without planes is extremely unlikely, unless we advance to higher tier of getting around.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea of using vegetable oil. I've heard of using corn syrup and such in cars, but vegetable oil in planes is a new one. It would cut down on the amount of oil we have to buy from foreign countries, as well as be beneficial to the environment. But wouldn't it be very hard to convert planes so they run on vegetable oil? And it might increase the price of air travel. You're right that it would take massive amounts of vegetables, which could easily cause deforestation. Overall, vegetable oil is certainly a good idea, but I don't think that it's practical, at least not right now. Many in a few years if the technology is up to par, but we're just not there yet.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting how you could use vegetable oil to make a plane run. I knew cars could run on it, but I didn’t know that vegetable oil could make planes run too. I agree with you when you mentioned how growing too many vegetables can cause farmers to move to different plots or even going out of business. So even though vegetable oil seems like a better alternative, we need to be careful about overusing this resource. Because I doubt that we can support too many airplanes in the future without destroying too much land. But for now, vegetable oil seems to be a good alternative.
ReplyDeleteUsing vegetable oil to make a plane fly is a great idea! I had never heard of using vegetable oil for planes but i have heard of using it for cars. You did a good job showing us the positives and the negatives of using vegetable oil. I agree that farmers would have to get more land in order to grow more vegetables for vegetable oil. This could lead to deforestation. I don't think using vegetable oil is the best idea but I also can't imagine not having planes.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is a great idea! I really have never out any thought into using vegetable oil for flying an airplane, but after I read this, I think my thoughts have changed. It was a good thing explaining the good things and the bad things about this change. I agree that this could lead to deforestation but I think we should switch because it costs a lot less to fly this way. Also, it is a good idea because I could not imagine a world where we did not have the option to fly planes to anywhere. Overall, you made a really good assessment of this article and you did a good job seeing all of the important information of it. This was a very good article as well and I hope these changes happen soon!
ReplyDelete