July 27, 2016
By Alex Davies
...As cultivation of tobacco (click here) started decreasing in North America in the late twentieth century, it started ramping up in Africa and Asia. To support world consumption of cigarettes, cigars, and other unhealthy products, the plant is produced in mass quantities that are challenging to redirect to other ends. But another product that humans do use is in mass quantities is fuel, especially when it comes to flying. A Boeing 747 burns more than 10 tons of fuel per hour while cruising, or nearly 4 liters (one gallon) each second.
That’s a lot of petroleum to pull out of the Earth, but, with Boeing’s help, South African Airways is working to produce its own biofuel with the tobacco plant as the top candidate.
It makes sense if you recall that one of the hundreds of categories of carcinogens in tobacco is tar — hydrocarbon compounds, like those in coal and petroleum, which release energy when burned.
Specifically, it’s Solaris tobacco, which is cultivated in the Limpopo Province and genetically engineered to produce almost no nicotine, but loads of oil, particularly in the plant seeds. In fact, the first biofuel-powered commercial planes in Africa transported 300 passengers from Johannesburg to Cape Town on July 15. The Boeing jets were, in part, fueled with Solaris tobacco plants, and the airline aims to use biofuel in routine flights by next year....
