Hustling to minimize India's coking coal imports

Coking coal when heated in the absence of air in coke oven batteries produces metallurgical coke, which quenches the endothermic thirst of gigantic blast furnaces that produce hot metal, which is further preferentially oxidized and refined in Basic Oxygen Furnaces (BOF) to produce liquid steel, which then goes through several secondary metallurgy operations, and finally cast and rolled into products of desired shape and size.

- Harendra Kumar & Shantanu Rai

India produced 106.56 million tons per annum (mtpa) of liquid steel in FY19 out of which 50.08 mtpa was produced through the conventional BF-BOF route.

The key benefits of this process are its robustness, mature technology, and high economies of scale & scope.

However, in the Indian context, this process suffers a serious drawback that is its critical dependency on coking coal.

Metallurgical coke plays a critical role in blast furnace route of iron making: provides the necessary heat required for the endothermic process, produces the reducing gas CO/CO2 for indirect and direct reduction of iron oxides & agglomerates, supports the raw material burden and maintains permeability.

While the Coke rate (specific consumption of metallurgical coke/ton of hot metal) of globally best performing Blast Furnaces is ~300-350 Kgs/THM, that of the Indian blast furnaces is 450-550 Kgs/THM.

One of the major reasons behind this is the high alumina & silica content in the Indian iron ore.

As per Department of Commerce data, India imported around 51.84 million tons of coking coal during FY 19 spending around $10.32 billion, which was up by 11.76 percent against the corresponding figure of $9.23 billion in FY18.

Coking coal imports accounted for ~2 percent of overall imports in the country.

The National Steel Policy envisions that India will produce 300 mtpa of liquid steel by 2030-31.