Question

Explain the term ‘SYNGAS’.

Answer 1

Hint: The term mentioned here is an abbreviation for a certain gas. It is the artificial version of a gas that is available in the environment. The gas that it’s the man-made version of is also known as fossil gas. You can use this to answer the given question.

Complete step by step answer:
The term given here to us is SYNGAS. It is an abbreviation for a synthesis gas.
Synthesis gas is also known as syngas and is a gas which mainly consists of a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and sometimes carbon dioxide.
SYNGAS contains around 30-60% CO, 5-15% $C{{O}_{2}}$ and 0-5% $C{{H}_{4}}$

As we can already understand from the name itself, synthetic or syngas is not a natural gas i.e. it is not found in the atmosphere. It is an artificially produced version of natural gas thus the name SYN, synthetic natural gas. During the process of formation of ammonia or methanol, we obtain an intermediate that is known as the synthetic natural gas which is given the name SYNGAS.
We know that natural gas is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon gas and it is also known as fossil gas. It is basically a mixture of methane primarily along with other higher alkanes and also contains a small percentage of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, helium etc.
We can produce this synthetic natural gas by gasifying any carbon containing mass like coke, coal and biomass which is then converted to methane which is the major component of natural gas.
However, it is also produced by other methods like by reaction with steam, carbon dioxide, oxygen etc.
Therefore, we can understand the term SYNGAS from the above discussion and it is the required answer.

Note: Synthetic natural gas was used as a replacement for gasoline earlier when there was not enough supply of gasoline. Even though it is less than half in energy density compared to natural gas, it was still used as an efficient fuel. It is also used in various processes to produce diesel as well as used in industries by directly converting into methanol, dimethyl etc.