Alternate fuel: flights on sunflower oil and ethanol. Part 3

India and flights on ethanol.

In the nearest months Ministry of civil aviation and Ministry of the oil and natural gas of India will elaborate methods of SAF usage. As opposed to European and American carriers, Indian companies only begin their work in this direction – India made small number of demonstration flights on mixed fuel. First of them was made by SpiceJet – on the mixture of 75% of traditional fuel and 25% of biofuel.

As raw material for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) India offers ethanol – in the country was prepared road map according to which to the new fuel variant will be added this alcohol.

On industrial scale ethanol is extracted from raw material that contains cellulose, – wood and wheat straw. It is hydrolyzed (chemical reaction with water) and then – exposed to spirit fermentation.

It is planned to produce 13.5 billion liters of ethanol to 2025-2026 that is twice more than 2021 level. This volume will be suitable for fuel impurities – its share will supposedly make 20%.

Taking into account that Indian aviation industry expects double-digit unit growth, decarbonization of the sector will become more difficult if government in the nearest future will not offer proper plan of actions. But experience of the country in this is not big: just several demonstration flights were made on mixed fuel. Besides, in December 2021 the biggest low-cost Indian airline company IndiGo received airplane that flew on SAF.