Government Encourages Biofuels To Replace BBM

Illustration. (Photo: Ministry of Industry)

JAKARTA - The government continues to encourage the use of environmentally friendly palm-based biofuels (green fuel). This is intended to reduce dependence on the use of fossil energy such as fuel oil (BBM).

Director of Bioenergy, Directorate General of New, Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation (EBTKE) of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources Andriah Feby Misna said that the development of palm-based green fuel is expected to produce green diesel (D100), green gasoline (G100) and green jet aviation fuel (J100).

According to him, the government is collaborating with PT Pertamina (Persero) to develop green fuel made from crude palm oil (CPO) at the BUMN refineries, which are located in palm production centers, both by co-processing at existing refineries, and in the future by building a new (stand alone) refinery specifically for green fuel.

Co-processing is one way of producing green fuel by processing vegetable oil raw materials with petroleum simultaneously.

"This green fuel product has similar characteristics to fossil-based fuels, even for some parameters the quality is much better than fossil-based fuels," Feby said as quoted by Antara, Sunday, July 26.

This green fuel development complements the implementation of the mandatory B30 program, namely a mixture of 30 percent fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) into diesel, which is effective as of January 1, 2020 and is currently testing the use of B40. If biodiesel fuel is made through an esterification process, temporarily green diesel with deoxygenation.

For green diesel or biohydrocarbon diesel, according to Feby, it has advantages over fossil-based diesel and biodiesel FAME, including a relatively higher cetane number, lower sulfur content, better oxidation stability, and clearer colors.

"Currently, Pertamina has successfully injected refined bleached deodorized palm oil (RBDPO) into the distillate hydrotreating refinery unit (DHDT) in several existing refineries using Red-and-White catalysts created by the nation's children from the ITB Team," added Feby.

At the Refinery Unit (RU) II Dumai, Riau, he continued, Pertamina also gradually tested green diesel starting from a mixture of 7.5 percent, 12.5 percent, and up to 100 percent.

"We should give our appreciation for Pertamina's success in producing green diesel with 100 percent CPO as raw material. The hope is that this trial can be continued in other RU-RUs and implemented in a sustainable manner so that we can truly be independent in producing environmentally friendly fuel oil with raw materials. standard from within the country, "he said.

In order to equalize perceptions of biofuel products, currently the government is also compiling a biofuel nomenclature, namely biodiesel with code B100, bioethanol (E100), biohidrocarbon gasoline (G100), biohidrocarbon diesel (D100), and biohidrocarbon avtur ( J100).