But Zhenhai Refining spokesman Huang Zhongwen told the South China Morning Post passengers need not worry because the new fuel would be “absolutely safe” for planes, adding that it would also not smell like a kitchen.
Sinopec, China’s largest oil company, started the project in 2011 as a countermeasure to a carbon tariff on civil aviation proposed by the European Union. The first sample product was synthesised in a Sinopec laboratory the following year but the biofuel was not used in a commercial flight until March 2015, when a Hainan Airlines Boeing 737 used a 50-50 mix of conventional jet fuel and biofuel to fly 156 passengers from Shanghai to Beijing.
“The flight was a one-off; just for show,” Huang said. “The plant, however, means long-term business.”
The design of the plant, to be built in Ningbo’s Zhenhai district, was near completion and other preparations were proceeding smoothly and on schedule.
“We have confidence about breaking ground in 2018 … output will meet the annual demand of certain long-distance flights,” Huang said. He declined to provide the investment cost or what the biofuel would sell for.
According to Boeing, a major maker of passenger jet planes, more than 1,500 commercials flights had used biofuel since 2011. These were all for demonstration purposes, however. The world’s 100,000 daily flights still stick to conventional fossil fuel.
Using waste kitchen oil was a challenge, said Professor Li Xuebing, a biofuel researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, in Shandong province.
“The barrels come in with all kinds of stuff: vegetable oil, animal fat, various proteins, salt, pepper …” he said.
