Today, the supplier of the world's energy needs, especially gasoline, is still dominated by petroleum based. Petroleum reserves that could be considered not renewable day to day will become thinner and eventually will run out because the rate of formation is not proportional to the exploitation. On the other hand, world energy demand will increase from year to year. Own domestic energy crisis had begun. The high world oil prices brought a very large impact on fuel prices regional economic and the Indonesian economy in general. Limitations of the energy sources are supposed to trigger the discovery of other type of energy sources. One of them is synthetic fuels.
Synthetic fuel can be obtained from the processing of natural materials which contains solid hydrocarbons (chemically compounds composed of hydrogen and carbon). Unlike gasoline, the fuel is processed from crude oil, synthetic fuel obtained by extraction of coal, pieces of solid oil (oil shale), tar sands, natural gas, or biomass. Although both types of fuel have a similar composition, they have different source. Coal can be processed to get liquid synthetic fuel through the process of disbursement (Liquefaction). Oil shale can be processed into liquid
synthetic fuels through retorting process. Meanwhile, natural gas processed
through the process gas to liquid technology.
As other fuels derived from petroleum, synthetic fuel can also be used for various purposes such as fuel for industrial machinery, motor vehicle fuel and fuel for household needs.
Producing Synthetic Fuel
Manufacture of synthetic fuel requires some fairly complicated process. In general, the process needs to be done is the extraction of hydrocarbons (HC)from coal, natural gas, oil shale, tar sand, or biomass. After that done, rearrangements of chemical structure H-C obtained through a chemical reaction.
a. Coal
Coal is a fossil fuel formed from the remains of plants (organic) ancient gradually buried in the earth. In the span of millions of years, these layers will continue to grow because formed new layers on top and cause increased pressure and temperature layers beneath it. As a result of organic materials are turned into coal.
From time immemorial, man had begun to utilize the coal as fuel in the housing and also for production machinery fuel. In its development, currently coal has become one of the largest raw materials for power generation. Coal can be synthesized into fuel gas and/or liquid through a gasification process, by heating it up together with water vapor and oxygen. The result is synthetic gas, which is a gas mixture of CO (carbon monoxide), hydrogen, and CH4 (methane).
This synthetic gas can be used directly as fuel or further processed to get more "clean" gas. The process to get this gas can also be done without having to mine the coal first. Burning coal deposits that are still in the ground through a drill, and then pump out the water vapor and oxygen into it. The resulting synthetic gas is then expelled through a separate channel.
Coal liquefaction will produce liquid fuel where