Leaders in the field of coal and steel industry on Saturday stressed on the need of bringing new technologies to improvise indigenous coal in order to curb the use of imported coal. They advocated for out of the box thinking to meet the National Steel policy targets by 2030.
Speaking in an international conference on ‘Advances in Coal and Coke Making Technologies — ACCT 2018’ organised by the Indian Institute of Metals, Ranchi Chapter from September 29 to 30 at the RDCIS auditorium, SAIL Ranchi, MECON Ltd CMD ATUL Bhatt complimented IIM Ranchi for organising this very relevant conference in terms of Jharkhand’s strategic location of coal reserves and also the timing coinciding with the Parivartan Parv on Saturday. He urged the collective for out of box thinking in order to arrive at Path-Breaking technologies in coke making which were need of the hour in view of the National Steel Policy of producing 300 MT by 2030.
Bhatt said conference shall provide quintessential opportunities for the manufacturer’s and scientists to come up with technologies which can reduce the ash content in the indigenous Indian coal and thereby reduce the 85 per cent use of Imported Coking Coal. Also, he urged the use of state of the art Coke Making technologies like High Capacity Large Volume batteries, Preheating of coal, stamp charging batteries, Hydrojet Door Cleaning, Coke Dry Quenching.
He opined that for matching the 300 MT steel production by 2030 in the country, 40 per cent of the Equipment shall be imported for attaining this which shall necessitate US $ 6 bn. This offered a lot for MAKE IN INDIA as the foreign suppliers would love to manufacture low cost spare parts in India making a Win-Win situation. This has attracted four different Ministries and they are entwining symbiotically on the 23rd Oct. conclave on Capital Goods and Requirements.
Gouri Charan, Chief Scientist, CSIR — CIMFER opined that CIMFER in association with RDCIS and CMPDIL has generated a good data base of details and they should be used for Enhanced use of non-coking coals in Pulverised Coal Injections, Beneficiate and enhanced use of Lean Vapour Compression (& other fine coals and thus bring down the imported coking coal from 85 per cent to 65 per cent.
Kushal Saha, Secretary General, IIM urged that the need of the hour was to make energy efficient Washeries by reducing the washing cost from Rs. 200 per ton to Rs. 90 per ton. China has reduced the energy requirement from Coal to Coke by 40 per centusing Coke Dry Quenching Technology and India is also pursuing similar measures.
SK Das, GM Incharge RDCIS opined that one third of the Production cost in SAIL is attributed to Coal and thus need of the hour was low VM Eco friendly coking coal technologies. He said that by proper beneficiation we can use even higher ash level coals. He also opined that the 300 MT scenario by 2030 would saturate levels of conventional transport and we need to emulate China by transporting coal in pipelines in form of slurry.
There were 7 papers presented in the Manufacturer’s session and an Invited Lecture by Dr. SK Halder, Coke Making Expert Ex-Tata Steel. The Manufacturer’s were M/s ACRE, China, M/s HUDE, Germany, M/s Vender Scientific, Germany, M/s Thyssenkruppe, Germany, M/s Paul Wurth, Luxemburg, M/s Thejo Engineering and M/s Lotus Wireless. Total number of delegates were 140. Total Number of Foreign Delegates were 10 from Germany, China & Japan, Total technical papers received were 45 and Total number of organisations/institutions who participated in the conference were 45.
The Keynote speaker was Dr. Gouri Charan, Chief Scientist, CSIR-CIMFR, Dhanbad. Session was also addressed by Kushal Saha, Secretary General IIM, SK Das, GM Incharge RDCIS, RK Burman Co Chairman ACCT 2018. The welcome address was given by Basudev Mishra, Chairman IIM Ranchi Chapter.
