Prepping Indian Coal For Power
Steel 360|November 2016

As the government aims at lowering coal imports, improving Indian coal quality by way of washing is a plausible technique. CIL will be setting up 15 coal washeries to that end. Use of blended coal in power plants is being sought after by the government, although challenges lie therein. Steel 360 reached out to Mr RK Sachdev, President, Coal Preparation Society of India (CPSI) to dig more on this bit of coal conundrum. 

Prepping Indian Coal For Power



Q. The power minister has been advocating use of Indian coal in power plants to bring down exports. What are the application challenges therein? 

A. There are no two opinions that the power plants should use domestic coal to the maximum extent. But this applies only to the hinterland plants. The plants located near the coastal areas that are designed to operate on high-efficiency, low-CO2 emission (HELE) super critical/ultra super critical steam parameters using high heat value imported coal cannot switch over to high ash content domestic coal of lower calorific value. Such an approach goes against often advocated adoption of HELE technologies. Furthermore, such an approach is also against the steps being taken to meet India's commitments to reduce CO2 emissions made at COP 21. 

Q. CIL has plans to set up 15 coal washeries by 2017. Although so far, only three with a capacity of 11.6 mnt pa are at the construction stage, while LOAs have been issued with regard to five others. What is your view of the progress and the plan? 

A. There are number of problems in expeditious tendering and issuance of LOAs for these washeries which were to set up on Build-Operate-Maintain (BOM) mode. In quite a few cases, the shortlisted L 1 bidders are not able to manage Bank Guarantees (BGs) amounting to full set up cost of the plants. Since big amounts of capital cost are involved, bidders are not able to mobilize these BG due to poor health of these companies and also due to present crisis prevailing in banking sectors. 

This story is from the November 2016 edition of Steel 360.

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This story is from the November 2016 edition of Steel 360.

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