As many as 15 new coal washeries have been planned for installation with a capacity of 112.60 Million Tonnes per year. Out of these, six are Coking Coal Washeries with capacity of 18.6 Million Tonnes per year and nine are Non-Coking Coal Washeries with total capacity of 94 Million Tonnes per year. Currently, 15 Coal Washeries owned by subsidiaries of Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) Coal India ltd are functioning with total capacity of 36.80 Million Tonnes per year. Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Coal, Power, New and Renewable Energy and Mines stated in Rajya Sabha today in reply to the question raised by member of Rajya Sabha Parimal Nathwani.
According to the Minister, out of total 15 functioning coal washeries owned by CIl subsidiaries, 12 washeries are located in Jharkhand. In addition to coal washeries owned by CIl, privaltely-owned 19 coal washeries are also functioning in the country, as per the statement.
Nathwani wanted to know about the details of coal washeries functioning at present and the annual expenditure incurred for running them, the steps taken/ being taken by the Government to construct coal washeries to improve the quality of coal produced in the country and the measures taken by the Government for producing more quantity of high grade coal in the country.
In the year 2015-16, total annual expenditure of Rs 3844.73 crore was incurred on the 15 coal washeries owned by subsidiaries of Coal India ltd, such as BCCl, CCl, NCl and WCl, said the statement.
The minister also stated that Coal India and its subsidiaries are deploying more number of surface miners to facilitate selective mining, adopting selective mining of bands of more than one meter thickness, appropriating positioning of OB and coal benches to avoid contamination and scrapping, cleaning of coal benches before blasting for improve the quality of low grade coal.