so recently today i made a coke oven for the heck of it and i tried putting a few stacks of coal into a hopper,no effect.then i tried to put it in the oven directly,no effect.i then tried using wood,it finally worked but inefficiently. could it be that the coal was synthetic?and if that is wouldn't the wood also not work(it was also synthetic).

Synthetic coal cannot be turned into coke.

Synthetic wood? Are you running Gregtech?