New Delhi: State-run Coal India Limited (CIL) and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) have signed a joint venture agreement (JVA) on Wednesday for setting up India’s first commercial-scale ammonium nitrate plant through surface coal gasification (SCG) technology route. The announcement comes a month after the government approved a Rs 8,500-crore Viability Gap Funding (VGF) scheme for coal gasification projects. The plant will not only be India’s first commercial coal gasification project, it will also be the first to deploy an indigenously-developed coal gasification technology devised by BHEL on a commercial scale.
The plant will come up in Lakhanpur area of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL), Odisha. It is planned to produce 2,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate per day initially. The annual production is slated at 6.60 lakh tonnes which requires 1.3 million tonnes (MT) of coal. The coal will be supplied by Coal India. BHEL would bring to the table indigenously-developed pressurised fluidised bed gasification (PFBG) technology for this purpose. “The synergy and partnership of the two corporate giants is a big step towards the National Coal Gasification Mission which facilitates the utilisation of chemical properties of coal,” said the Coal Ministry in a statement.
The timeline for CIL’s coal gasification plant to start operations is 2028-29, Coal Secretary Amrit Lal Meena said.
Projects and Development India Limited (PDIL), a Miniratna design engineering and consultancy company, has been assigned the work for preparing a detailed feasibility report for CIL’s coal gasification plant. Physical possession of the land is under progress and will be completed by September 2024 after which construction activities will follow.
The Coal Secretary said that with the commitment of CIL and BHEL, this project will be a role model. “Gasification is the highest priority area for the Ministry of Coal. In the next two-to-three years, there will be sufficient coal,” he said. All the possible support from the government is in place, including financial support for viable gap funding, he added.
Additional Coal Secretary M Nagaraju said that the coal gasification plant set up by Coal India will allow the nascent technology to mature for commercial deployment and show the way to the private sector for following suit.
The agreement was signed by Debasish Nanda, Director (Business Development), CIL, and Jai Prakash Srivastava, Director (Engineering, R&D) BHEL. The vote of thanks was presented by Dr Peeyush Kumar, General Manager (Business Development), Coal India Limited.
“CIL will pursue alternative uses of coal for environment-friendly ventures like coal gasification in the future after fulfilling the requirements of the power sector. SCG is a promising technology that converts coal into valuable Syn gas. This on further processing produces synthetic natural gas that can be used as alternative natural gas. Additionally, it can be used as feedstock for downstream chemicals production which are currently being imported and for power generation as well,” said the Coal Ministry.
BHEL CMD K Sadashiv Murthy, Vijay Mittal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Heavy Industries, and other senior officers of both the ministries and promoting companies were present during the signing of the joint venture agreement.
