Word: babassu
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...protest the rising price of corn, used in the U.S. to make ethanol. Virgin and partners claim that their airplane fuel is, as Branson says, "completely environmentally and socially sustainable." It's not made from staple-food crops or from crops that required deforestation. But even coconuts and babassu have their problems: the oil yield is just not that high. If a 747 could run on coconut oil alone, it would still take more than a dozen acres of crop to fill one plane...
...powered engine was using a blend of conventional jet fuel and biofuel: 80/20 in favor of the regular stuff. In total, then, just 5% of the 49,000-lb (22,000 kg) fuel load consisted of the novelty: a special mix of coconut oil and oil from the Brazilian babassu plant, prepared by Seattle-based Imperium Renewables over the last 18 months and tested by General Electric Aviation in Ohio...
...Just before 12:30 at Heathrow, Virgin Atlantic's 747 touched down in Amsterdam, finishing off the event without a hiccup - which is more than could be said for Branson himself. For kicks, the mogul had drunk a sample of his firm's coconut oil and babassu oil jet-fuel blend. "My God that was horrible," he told reporters afterward. "I've been burping ever since." Now that, without a doubt, is a publicity stunt...
Most Americans have not heard of the babassu nut since September 1936, when Alf Landon attacked this "jungle product" as an example of the riffraff being let into the country by Cordell Hull's reciprocal trade treaties. It grows in Brazil and its oil, used in margarine, competed with U.S. butter. Alf's "babassu speech" was a major milestone on his route to Kansas. But last week the babassu nut came into...
...oiticica oil is a tung-oil substitute; the U.S. imported 16,000,000 lb. last year. The muru-muru and tucum trees, also Brazil's, are palm substitutes. Venezuela's jungle-grown corozo and macanilla nuts have the quick-lathering qualities of coconut oil. So has the babassu, of which the U.S. imported 63,000,000 Ib. last year, mostly for soap. In fact, of all imported oils still available to the U.S., Brazil's babassu is now the most important for soap-even in Kansas...