“Yellow Angels” (Gelbe Engel) – this is how the Germans call the roadside assistance service of the All-German Automobile Club (ADAC, Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club eV). In addition to 1,700 specially equipped vehicles, the club also has its own helicopter fleet – all rescue vehicles are painted yellow.
On ADAC Luftrettung helicopters, rescuers quickly reach the sites of the most severe traffic accidents in order to provide first aid to the victims and take them to the hospital. Traveling by air avoids traffic jams and speeds up the transportation process. This is critical to saving lives, as it is often a matter of minutes. According to ADAC, their rescue helicopters make up to 150 sorties a day on average.
Deep-frying oil instead of kerosene
A significant disadvantage of using helicopters – and ADAC Luftrettung has about fifty of them – is the negative impact of such aircraft on the environment. For example, the H145 model is equipped with two gas turbine engines with a capacity of more than 700 horsepower each. In just two hours in the air, a helicopter produces as much harmful emissions as one small car in a whole year. Against this backdrop, ADAC decided to bet on the use of more environmentally friendly fuels, such as those made from used deep-frying oil.
As long as it’s an experiment. The eco-program includes two helicopters that are used in the west of Germany. These are “Christoph Rheinland”, assigned to Cologne-Bonn airport, and “Christoph Europa 1” (Christoph Europa 1), based near Aachen. They decided to reduce the share of aviation kerosene used for them – now helicopters are filled with synthetic fuel by a third. In its manufacture, the used vegetable oil is used. Biokerosene is supplied by a major aviation fuel manufacturer.
Everything flies like clockwork
There have been previous attempts in the aviation industry to use biofuels. Airbus conducted tests on several aircraft, including the double-deck A380, the largest passenger airliner to date. But for such helicopter engines, such an eco-plan is being implemented for the first time in the world, according to the automobile club.
The German newspaper Bild quoted Burkhard Schneider, a spokesman for the ADAC Luftrettung division, as saying that the share of harmful emissions should be reduced by 20 percent as a result. But this prediction has yet to be confirmed experimentally. In addition, it is important to understand how important this will be in the course of the active use of helicopters. It is worth noting that only Christoph Rheinland in 2022 took to the air a thousand times.
So far, the experiment is going like clockwork. Bild newspaper quotes pilot Andreas Hagenbarth as saying that the type of fuel used does not affect handling. Therefore, the safety of pilots and transported patients is ensured at the highest level, they promise in ADAC Luftrettung. But the helicopter, according to the pilot, has to be washed less often, because the proportion of soot emitted has decreased.
Issue price
From a legal point of view, the share of biofuels produced from used vegetable oil can be increased to 50 percent. If it were possible to refuel helicopters only in this environmentally friendly way, then CO2 emissions could be reduced by a factor of 10, according to forecasts. According to Burkhard Schneider, the ultimate goal is to completely switch to synthetic fuels and achieve climate neutrality, but so far the industry is only at the beginning of the journey.
Although deep-frying oil is used as a raw material, in reality, the biokerosene obtained from it is not at all cheap. The production process is very complex and guarantees only small volumes. This is reflected in the price: today, biofuels are much more expensive than jet fuel.
In addition to ADAC, the German Aerospace Research Center DLR and the Aachen University of Applied Sciences FH Aachen are participating in the experiment. In three years, helicopters must fly a thousand hours on biofuel. By the way, the name Christophe is always present in the name of ADAC rotorcraft – and it is no coincidence. Helicopters are named after Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.
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