With a mock crop dusting exercise performed by a bright orange single engine plane flying over a sugar cane-growing region, Brazil’s aircraft manufacturer, Embraer on Thursday unveiled what it said would be the world’s first industrially produced alcohol fuelled plane.
”It handled beautifully,” said test pilot Jose Mauricio Leite Nogueira shortly after the test flight in this city 250 kilometres northwest of Sao Paulo. ”It has more power than normal aviation fuel and responds much faster.”
Embraer’s subsidiary, Neiva invested $300 000 to develop the engine, which for the time being will only be used on small single engine crop dusters, according to company director Paulo Urbanavicius. He said the company hopes to sell 6 to 10 EMB Ipanema 202 planes per month starting in 2004 and that he expects the Federal Aviation Authority to ratify the aircraft in about 18 months. Each unit will carry a price tag of about 200 000 reals ($50 000).
The principal benefits of the new plane are environmental and lower crop dusting and maintenance costs, he said. ”The alcohol, which is the same used to fuel cars, has no lead and emits far less carbon monoxide than gasoline. And it costs much less. While a litre of gasoline costs about 3,50 reals (88 US cents) alcohol costs no more than one real (25 US cents) a litre,” Urbanavicius said. ”The life span of the engine is also greater, thus reducing maintenance costs.”
He said that while alcohol-powered planes have been used on an experimental basis in the United States and Europe, ”the Ipanema will be the world’s first such aircraft to be produced on an industrial scale and for commercial use.”
In principle, he said, alcohol could fuel larger piston-engine planes. According to Neiva’s commercial director Fabiano Zaccarelli Cunha, the new engine could eventually equip other light aircraft models, like Cessnas and Pipers.
The new engine was unveiled at a time when the government is trying to revive its so-called Pro-Alcohol program aimed at reducing the country’s dependency on oil imports by using fuel alcohol. The program peaked in the mid 1980s when 70% of all newly produced cars were alcohol-driven.
When global oil prices fell and domestic oil production rose during the 1990s, the government phased out subsidies for the program and the production of alcohol-driven cars fell gradually. It reached a low point last year, when only one percent, or about 3-million of newly produced cars, were equipped with alcohol-fueled engines.
”The development of an alcohol-fueled plane is welcome, but it won’t have much of an impact on the country’s sugar and alcohol sector,” said Alfred Szwarc, a technical consultant of the Sao Paulo State Sugar Cane Agro Industrial Association that represents the state’s 120 sugar and alcohol producers. ”Planes equipped with these engines are not expected to consume more than 50-million litres a year, while alcohol production in 2002 will come in at about 12,5-billion liters.” – Sapa-AP