Muhaimin Iqbal
Author

Energy Independence with Local LPG

Advanced Renewable

Fri , 26 Apr 2024 20:43 WIB

For more than two decades, this country of 17,500 islands has been addicted to LPG even up to its remote areas and remote islands. In fact, sending filled and empty LPG cylinders which are heavier than their contents is very expensive. As a result, LPG for the wider community is largely heavily subsidized.

Because the majority of LPG raw materials, namely propane and butane, must be imported, the recipients of our subsidies are actually suppliers and traders out there, there is a guarantee of LPG purchases for more than 280 million people, of course this is a very tempting business.

On the other hand, for every cent of foreign exchange we use to buy imported materials, our GDP is reduced by that amount, aka the import of LPG raw materials is a very significant impoverishment factor for the majority of the population of this country. Can imports of LPG raw materials be stopped and replaced with local products?

The answer is absolutely possible, in fact this solution will not only have an impact on energy independence, increase energy security, achieve SDG no 7 - Affordable Clean Energy, it will also accelerate the prosperity of this population by two factors at once. The first factor is that there is no longer a reduction in our foreign exchange which reduces GDP from LPG imports, and the second factor is local economic growth - namely economic activity driven by local LPG production.

At least we found three raw materials that are very suitable for our local LPG production, namely CO2 emissions, charcoal and biogas. All three are feasible even though they require quite a lot of energy in the first of the three reactions in each of the feedstocks we use.

However, because the process energy in this first reaction uses cheap energy, namely charcoal with a price in the range of 0.67 cents per MJ, while the energy for the LPG product is in the range of 2.45 cents per MJ, the energy cost for this first reaction is only in the range of 3-5 % of the product selling price. The next two reactions are exothermic, producing heat energy, which can be processed into electricity generation etc., making this Micro LPG plant very attractive.

The compact reactor like the one on the left of the image below is designed for these three reactions simultaneously and is ready to process the three types of feedstocks mentioned above into our local LPG!