synfuel

1 7.3

A fuel people make from coal, gas, or plants instead of oil

noun
/ˈsɪnˌfjuːəl/

Specialized

: combustible sintético

In South Africa, the government supports the development of synfuel technologies to reduce reliance on imported oil.
synfuel plants

Examples

Without it, the market would use natural gas and synfuel from coal to replace gasoline because they are less expensive than sustainable alternatives.

Blog text (11)
And Sandia is doing a lot of work on making synfuel this way from just using the solar heat with a Fischer tropes process at high temperature.
Companies are exploring how to produce synfuel more efficiently from coal and natural gas.
As oil prices rise, synfuel is increasingly seen as a viable alternative for powering vehicles.

How Artificial

synfuel

Specialized

1 7.3

fuel oil

Specialized

5 3.5

biofuel

Specialized

3.9

crude oil

Specialized

47 3.4

Surface Forms

synfuel singular

synfuels plural

Morphology

synfuel = fuel (semi-transparent) = syn + fuel

Formed from 'syn-' (short for 'synthetic') + 'fuel'; 'fuel' is clear but the clipped combining form 'syn-' may be unfamiliar to many learners.

Etymology

Synfuel is a short form of synthetic fuel, and the syn- part comes from a root that means 'put together' or 'made by people'. So synfuel is fuel people 'make' from coal, gas, or plants instead of taking it directly from oil.