500 Miles on 10-Percent Plastic Waste

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Plastic threatens to choke the world’s oceans, five gyres or “garbage patches” of plastic debris twirling around in toxic profusion.  These plastic bits and pieces, slowly photodegrading into smaller and smaller pieces, also choke the fish and birds that feed on or in the water.  It’s a huge problem that invites grand visions for solutions In what may at first glance seem a very small attempt to help,”Campaigning Pilot Jeremy Rowsell has made history by flying a light aircraft more than 500 miles from Sydney to Melbourne, Australia, using conventional fuel blended with 10% fuel manufactured by the UK’s Plastic Energy, from plastic waste.” Jeremy flies a Vans Aircraft RV-9A, which uses a blend of “end-of-life” plastic waste, transformed from a pollutant into a viable jet A1 fuel by a process developed by Cynar PLC, an Irish firm.  That process has been picked up by Plastic Energy SL, a Spanish company. “On Wings of Waste” (OWOW) uses a “’10 per …

A Flight to Counter Plastic Pollution

Dean Sigler Biofuels, Diesel Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

Jeremy Rowsell, an Australian pilot and concerned environmentalist, has seen plastic littering beaches around the world, and knows of the micro-plastic particles ingested by fish and sea birds.  His hope four years ago was to fly a Cessna from Australia to London and back – powered by fuel made from that waste plastic. That event never came, and Rowsell is back with a still ambitious plan to fly an RV-9A from San Francisco, California (the world’s innovation hub, according to the project’s web site) to Anchorage, Alaska (the world’s climate change frontier), following a safer route than the originally planned oceanic journey. The Problem and One Solution Partnering with Plasticenergy, a Spanish company that uses “end-of-life” plastic to make commercially viable fuel “suitable for all diesel engines,” Rowsell’s flight would demonstrate that keeping plastic waste out of the world’s oceans could have economic, as well as environmental, benefits. In the oceans, plastic photodegrades over time, turning into smaller and smaller …

Solar Impulse Passes Midway Islands

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

With the sun soon to rise in the Pacific, Solar Impulse 2 continues scooting at over 60 mph toward Honolulu as the third night comes to an end.  Significantly, Andre’ Borschberg and the 747-size plane have made it past the Midway Islands, once a stop-over for Pan-Am Boeing 314 “China Clippers.”  Even with their 3,500-mile range, those luxurious planes needed a fueling stop mid-way between Hawaii and China or Guam. The islands were important enough as a way station in the vast Pacific that one of the largest and most decisive battles of World War II took place near them.   In a battle terrible destructive to both sides, U. S. forces sank four Japanese carriers, essentially casting the fate of the remaining battles. The still-important role of the islands as emergency landing sites was reinforced in 2014 with the safe arrival of a Boeing 777 following “an odor” and failure of radar and other electronic systems. The idea of a …