Clean up coal

Coal accounts for 50 per cent of the country's energy mix and 70 per cent of its coal is used in power generation. The dependence on coal will not reduce over time and is likely to increase. Hence, all efforts should be made to get more out of the country's coal, extract as much of usable energy out of it as possible, and also reduce the polluting effect of such activity. This is needed both to promote the country's energy security (India is seriously dependent on imported energy) and improve people's health through lower pollution resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. Expert advice in this regard is already available with the government of India, through a "Technology Vision 2030" prepared for it by Teri. But going by the shape that the eleventh five-year plan has taken, the advice offered by the study seems to have been ignored. The plan projects a 50 per cent rise in installed power generation capacity but has no roadmap on how the generating effort can be improved through greater generating efficiency. This is when current average energy recovery in our power plants, which stands at 29 per cent, can be improved to as much as 40 per cent. If this were done, not only will the country's coal reserves be better used, the polluting impact of generation will reduce.

The Teri report has made specific suggestions like the need to go in for super-critical and ultra super-critical boilers for a unit of 1,000 Mw to be able to economically use the Benson boiler technology. But the situation on the ground is that such technology is slated to be used, and that too in units of only 800 Mw capacity, in the ultra mega power stations. Of the two such projects which have been tendered, only one, at Mundra, is making progress. However, the size of coal-fired units using supercritical technology has already gone up to 1,200 Mw in South Africa. Bhel, which has acquired the necessary technology, is yet to get its first order. It is asking for a bunch of orders, the way in which eight 500 Mw units were ordered in the early eighties for such technology to be absorbed and standardised. The Teri report also calls for the need to acquire the integrated gassification and combined cycle (IGCC) technology, if necessary by outright purchase. Through this process, coal is turned into gas, the impurities removed and then combustion undertaken in order to both improve combustion efficiency and lower harmful emissions. It has been estimated that for every 1 per cent gain in combustion efficiency, carbon dioxide output is lowered by a little over 2 per cent.

This technology is in the development stage but global co-operation is already on to familiarise engineers in countries such as India and China, which will play a key role in improving energy efficiencies and reducing harmful emissions. An Indo-US workshop on pre-combustion cleaning of coal will be held in August and the government of India will be presented with R&D project proposals for underground coal gassification with cleaning, waste management and carbon dioxide sequestering. Japan holds an annual workshop for engineers from third world countries for kaizen (continuous improvement) efforts to boost combustion efficiency of coal. It is urgently necessary for the government of India to get going in its own interests on this front irrespective of whether it makes any commitment to the global community to reduce the energy and emission intensity of its development effort.