Institute of Gas, Giprokoks to implement project of producing alternative fuel

By Svetlana Sytina
The Ukrainian Times

In Ukrainian cities motor transport releases 90% of carcinogenic discharge in the air. Starting production of competitive alternative fuel from coal and gas enables a substantial reduction in this contamination of air, as well as supplies the petroleum products market with a new kind of motor fuel.

The Institute of Gas under the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine has accumulated a considerable amount of experience of the oxygen conversion of natural gas on an industrial scale to obtain gaseous products containing carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Together with the Kharkov-based institute Giprokoks, the Institute of Gas is preparing for the implementation of the international project Hydrogen Power Engineering whose purpose is to produce motor fuel from the coal of Ukrainian deposits on the basis of its steam-oxygen gasification.

The processes of coking coal, as well as synthesizing carbon monoxide and hydrogen, particularly in accordance with the Fischer-Tropsch process, are sources of producing alternative fuel. The Republic of South Africa found industrial uses of such synthesis as three plants owned by the company Sasol have been producing annually a total of 4.5 million tons of motor fuel since 1983. Coal-rich and oil-poor South Africa became a pioneer of this production during the apartheid era. Sanctions blocked imports of oil, but it required transport fuel at any cost.

In the 1990s several natural-gas processing plants were built in conformity with the Fischer-Tropsch method. Currently, a Qatar-based complex is converting 45 million cubic meters of natural gas into diesel oil, aviation fuel and lubricants.

Today China takes a keen interest in this technology. Specifically, Sasol and the corporation China Shenhua Energy plan to organize production of fuel from coal in 2016. Meanwhile, the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis under the Russian Academy of Sciences works out similar techniques.

Synthetic motor fuel conforms to active quality requirements that enables its use in the existent fuel infrastructure. Importantly, Ukraine has the raw materials and facilities for research, which can ensure production of alternative fuel.

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