The potential of liquid fuel production from lignite using bio-solubilization method in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesian coal reserves amounted to 20.98 billion tons, which was dominated by lignite of 59%. Its abundance, various usage, and relatively cheaper price is some of the many profitable traits for it to be used as an energy source for many industries especially in Indonesia. However, most of the type of low-quality lignite (96.4%) may result in a serious case of air pollution. For this reason, direct combustion is not an ideal process to extract energy from coal for environmental protection. This study aims to research the potential of lignite conversion into liquid fuel which considerably has less emission. A process called bio-solubilization utilizes the role of microorganisms to convert solid coal into liquid fuel/chemical compounds while still producing environmentally friendly by products. Furthermore, lignite contains simple aromatic compounds which is a favourable condition to optimize the process. Through several study review, it seems that there are still many microorganisms’ behaviours which need to be investigated further to ensure a steady process of solubilization, regardless the great potential of bio-solubilization. However, there is a hope of liquid coal production yield optimization, one of which is by pretreatment process which helps in increasing the susceptibility of brown coal to microbial solubilization.