Scientists have recently discovered a bacteria that could help fuel a plane one day. This is likely to change the aviation industry and bring it one step closer to achieving net zero.
Conventional jet fuel is created by burning fossil fuels, like oil and gas, which generate a large carbon footprint. This has pushed scientists to find an alternative means and they have now stumbled onto sugar-munching bacteria that could change everything.
Sugar-munching bacteria and planes
The Streptomyces bacteria create an explosive molecule when it consumes sugar, that can be used as an alternative plane fuel. As the bacteria eats sugar or amino acids, it breaks it down and converts it into carbon-to-carbon bonds.
These bonds are triangular, hence they hold a lot of tension inside. If these bonds are broken, they will release energy, which can be converted into energy.
Pablo Cruz-Morales, a microbiologist at the Technical University of Denmark, says, “If we can make this fuel with biology there’s no excuses to make it with oil. It opens the possibility of making it sustainable.”
Impacts of flying planes on the planet
Aviation has become one of the fastest growing sources of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The adverse effect of flying continues to affect our planet as it keeps growing and there being no alternative sources to kerosene.
Flying is indeed detrimental to our planet’s health as it impacts and contributes to global warming, pollution, and leaves a huge carbon footprint. Airplanes run on kerosene fuel which releases a large amount of carbon dioxide and other gases when combusted.
With the world being more accessible, people love to travel in planes from one destination to the other and the amount of the carbon footprint left from one plane ride is a huge contributing factor to global warming. The high rate of carbon emissions affects and contributes to the erosion of our ozone layer, thus leading to global warming.
It’s important for us to find alternate sources of energy that are greener, as one day we will definitely run out of fossil fuels. Hydrogen, solar panels, agricultural waste, cooking oil, household trash, and biofuels can be used commercially one day instead of kerosene.
With the discovery of this sugar-munching bacteria, it could definitely help take us one step closer to net zero flying one day.
