Virgin is announcing it will fly a 747 on a new biofuel, which they have been calling Virgin Fuel. This could relate to the July 2007 investment in Gevo, Inc., a CalTech research outgrowth.

We can only applaud this largely symbolic step forward, but nevertheless have to wonder at the commercial viability of such a demonstration. If we had to venture a guess, we’d say Virgin Fuel is a derivative of a higher carbon alcohol like butanol, which Gevo has been calling bio-butanol. Butanol has ‘caught fire’ lately (pun intended) as it possesses a number of properties that make it a superior fuel to ethanol: it has better energy density, and with a higher octane rating than gasoline and better lubricity, it may get even better mileage. In addition, it can be burned neat, while ethanol must be mixed with another fuel like gasoline.

Currently, butanol is very expensive. There are a number of researchers and just plain folks who believe they have a shot at making it commercially viable by producing it from biomass using a combination of genetic engineering and enzymes. The 747 stunt implies that we are ready to go; actually, we are at least 10 years out. The fact that butanol is still 8% soluble in water creates difficulties in production. Having a higher boiling point than water, butanol is difficult to economically extract from a ‘wet’ bio source.

It’s important to note that while we wait for the ‘perfect’ alternative fuel, 20,000,000 barrels of petroleum are being processed each day, just in the US. We can’t wait to release all of the carbon we can from an essentially non-renewable resource in the hope that it won’t be enough to destroy life on earth as we know it; we must slow our consumption now. Given that we KNOW biodiesel is a warm-weather replacement for the fuel oil sector, it makes much more sense to go forward with it on all fronts than to hope for a miraculous breakthrough.