The time has come to look for ways to improve technology in coal-based industries as India is having more than 70% coal-based power stations, a situation that would continue for at least the next 10 years, said A V Krishnan, the executive director of BHEL Trichy.
Participating at the two-day conference on clean coal, carbon capture and storage technologies that has been organized by the Trichy Regional Engineering College Science Technology Entrepreneurs Park (TREC-STEP) in partnership with BHEL, Krishnan said that in a country like India where more and more coal-based power stations were bound to come up in the coming years, lessening the carbon-related emissions was of paramount importance.
Krishnan said different technologies needed to be used for different coals. For instance, he said that BHEL was successfully using the newly-developed integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology that would greatly improve the efficiency level, that is to say a measure of how much heat energy embedded in coals was converted into electricity. Funded by the European Union, the project aims at disseminating the latest carbon capture and storage technologies among the Indian thermal power players as the anticipated growth in energy demand is expected to widen the usage of coal in energy sector in the coming years. To reduce the consumption of goal, and emissions (carbon, hydrogen, sulfur related), the IGCC would be one of the future technologies for green power generation, Krishnan said. In fact, BHEL has taken it up as a project and working hand in hand with TREC-STEP for the last three years, visited a number of power plants in the country to study what kind of technology was used at present, and what would be better-suited for the Indian conditions.
Speaking on the sidelines, John Topper, CEO of International Energy Agency (IEA) Coal Research Ltd and Environmental Projects Ltd, UK, said that 41% of the global power came from coal and its usage would increase significantly if the current government policies continued. "Most of the additional coal need would be felt in Asia with China and India dominating the scene. Moreover, India is currently number two in coal use and is projected to be number one importer soon surpassing China," Topper said. Coal will be used as it is relatively cheap and plentiful, but the darker side of it was that long-term use of coal will have consequences over environment and climate change, he warned.
Marion Wilde, policy officer, European Commission (EC) directorate general for energy, Belgium said the joint declaration on energy adopted at the EU-India summit in February 2012 renewed firm commitment on both sides to enhance cooperation on energy field, one of the priority areas for mutually beneficial joint activity on the development and deployment of advanced coal mining and clean coal technologies.
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