London, Feb 24 (ANI): An Australian pilot is set to cover a 10,500-mile trip from Sydney to London using a fuel that has never before been tested in the air, which is produced entirely from plastic waste.
Jeremy Rowsell's flight will be powered by five tons of discarded packaging and waste collected from rubbish dumps and - using a pioneering technique - melted down into 1,000 gallons of aviation-grade diesel.
The 41-year-old will leave Sydney in July, flying over Asia, the Middle East and then Europe, and hoping to arrive in London six days later, after flying a single-engine Cessna 172 about 1,500 miles a day at a speed of about 115mph, the Telegraph reported.
To do this, he will have to fly for up to 15-hour stretches to reach his scheduled stops on time.
He will travel at an altitude of 5,000ft - much lower than commercial airliners, which reach up to 40,000ft on long-haul flights.
The fuel will come solely from so-called "end-of-life" plastic that cannot be recycled and would otherwise end up as landfill, including household waste such as packaging and wrapping.
The plastics will be collected from the countries in which he is scheduled to stop along the way and shipped to Cynar, the Dublin firm that will help process the waste into aviation-grade diesel.
Recent advances mean that it is now possible to distil plastic - most of which is petroleum-based - into fuel, using a process known as pyrolysis that does not pollute the air.
The company claims that its plastic waste diesel fuel is cleaner than that used by most planes, its production process is cleaner, and it estimates a lower cost per gallon.
Although it has been tested in cars, it is in the very early stages of aero engine tests and has never been used in flight.
Rowsell, a hobby pilot and insurance broker, decided to undertake the trip to raise awareness of new technologies that are exploring viable, environmentally friendly ways to fly, while also cutting down the amount of plastic waste in landfills around the world. (ANI)
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