MUMBAI, INDIA: Globally, and especially in the Asia Pacific region, Coal is turning out to be the major source of energy. Many of the technologies - ‘clean technologies’ have now been demonstrated and is extensively being used by the global industry. These are some of the discussions at the International seminar on ‘Clean Coal Technologies and Chemicals from Coal,’ conducted during the ‘India Chem 2012’ event.
Coal based chemicals are assuming importance for India day by day. India at present is over dependent on imported crude oil and the import bill for the same is more than 50 per cent of total foreign Ex earning of India from import. On the other hand, India has sufficient coal reserves.
Coal gasification technologies have been employed to produce chemical feedstocks, the building blocks from which complex chemicals such as plastics, fibre, dyes and other consumer products are constructed thus reducing dependency on petroleum. In coal-to-chemicals, synthesis gas (syngas) – a gaseous mixture of primarily carbon monoxide and hydrogen – is produced by gasification of coal. The syngas can then be fashioned into a number of useful chemical building blocks, like methanol or acetyls for example, mentioned the speakers during the session.
“Since sustainability will become a major issue in the future, creating cleaner forms of energy is a big requirement. There are many challenges in the coal conversion technology as coal is a complex substance. One of the major concerns among the industry is reducing waste during the process,” said Professor G D Yadav, Vice Chancellor, Institute Of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, one of the speakers during the seminar.
On similar lines, Ashish Logani, Process Technology, Fluor Daniel India Pvt Ltd said, “Indian coal has high ash content which is a major issue that needs to be addressed. Also concerns such as handling impurities (sulphur, chlorine etc) and capital requirement for setting up the process are some of the other problems.”
On the technology front, Lakshmana Rao V, Chief Manager (Mechanical), Tata Consultancy Engineers Ltd said, “Considering clean coal technologies some of the known ones are super critical technology, fluidized bed combustion technology and integrated gasification combined coal (IGCC) technology. Of this, the IGCC has more scope to be developed in the Indian context.”
The industry leaders also touched upon, ammonia and urea as significant products of coal-to-chemicals for use in fertilizers as also for the production of dyes, inks, pesticides, plasticizers, solvents and coatings. In addition to agricultural chemicals like ammonia and urea for fertilizer, methanol is a substantial product of coal-to-chemicals gasification technology, were some of the talking points during the seminar.
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