Coal-loaded wagons transfer in direction of the Kamarajar Port at Ennore, close to Chennai. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
The story up to now: A current report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a enterprise backed by billionaire hedge fund supervisor and philanthropist, George Soros, furnished new paperwork to allege that in 2014, the Adani Group claimed ‘low grade’ coal, imported from Indonesia, to be ‘high-quality’ coal, inflated its worth and bought it to Tamil Nadu’s energy era firm, TANGEDCO (Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Company).
What is ‘high grade’ and ‘low grade’ coal?
High and low high quality are relative phrases and solely significant within the context of the place the coal is used and the way they’re processed. The Gross Calorific Value (GCV), or the quantity of warmth or vitality that may be generated from burning the coal, determines the gradation of coal. Coal being a fossil gasoline is a combination of carbon, ash, moisture and a bunch of different impurities. The increased the obtainable carbon in a unit of coal, the higher is its high quality or ‘grade.’ There are 17 grades of coal by this metric from grade 1, or fine quality coal, with a kilo of it yielding increased than 7,000 kcal, and the bottom producing anyplace between 2,200-2,500 kcal, as per a classification by the Coal Ministry. However, the calorific worth will not be a helpful metric by itself. The most necessary makes use of of coal are in working thermal energy vegetation or powering a blast furnace to supply metal and each require completely different varieties of coal. ‘Coking’ coal is the type wanted to supply coke — an integral part of metal making — and thus requires minimal ash content material. Non-coking coal, regardless of its ash content material, can be utilized to generate sufficient helpful warmth to run a boiler and turbine.
What are the traits of Indian coal?
Indian coal has traditionally been evaluated as being excessive in ash content material and low in calorific worth in comparison with imported coal. The common GCV of home thermal coal ranges from 3,500-4,000 kcal/kg in comparison with imported thermal coals of +6,000 kcal/kg of GCV. Also the common ash content material of Indian coals is greater than 40% in comparison with imported coal which has lower than 10% ash content material. The consequence of that is that high-ash coal when burnt leads to increased particulate matter, nitrogen and sulphur dioxide. Given this, the federal government, since 1954, has managed the worth of coal in a method that energy firms have been disincentivised to make use of high-grade coking coal for energy era.
Thus within the pursuit of balancing India’s wants for coal manufacturing, energy vegetation and air pollution, the federal government has really helpful the use of imported coal with decrease ash and moisture content material. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) in 2012 really helpful, and which nonetheless stands, that about 10-15% mixing of imported coal can normally be safely utilized in Indian energy boilers, that are designed for low high quality Indian coal.
What is clear coal?
Broadly, we get clear coal when the carbon content material has been elevated by decreasing its ash content material. Coal vegetation have ‘washing plants’ on website which might course of the coal in ways in which cut back ash and moisture content material. They make use of big blowers or a ‘bath’ to take away wonderful, coarse ash. However, deploying such gear is pricey and provides to the fee of energy. The different technique to wash coal — once more requiring vital funding — is coal gasification. Here, the necessity to straight burn coal is bypassed by changing it into gasoline. By counting on an built-in gasification mixed cycle (IGCC) system, steam and scorching pressurised air or oxygen mix with coal in a response that forces carbon molecules aside. The ensuing syngas, a combination of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, CO2 and water vapour, is then cleaned and burned in a gasoline turbine to make electrical energy. Since IGCC energy vegetation create two kinds of vitality (steam from the gasification course of other than syngas as gasoline), they improve effectivity of the coal used.
What is the longer term of coal in India?
Official knowledge says that India in 2023-24 produced 997 million tonnes of coal, an 11% progress over the earlier yr. Most of this was produced by the state-owned Coal India Ltd and its subsidiaries.
As of March 2024, India produced 261 tonnes of coal, of which 58 million tonnes was coking coal. Despite said commitments to transition India’s electrical energy sector away from fossil gasoline, coal is the mainstay of India’s vitality economic system. Change, nonetheless, is within the air as for the primary time this yr, renewable vitality accounted for 71.5% of the file 13.6 GW energy era capability added by India within the first quarter of this yr, whereas coal’s share (together with lignite) of complete energy capability dropped beneath 50% for the primary time because the Nineteen Sixties.
