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New Delhi: State-run miner Coal India Ltd (CIL) is planning to construct 18 new washeries by 2020 including nine for processing of coking and the other nine for meant for non-coking coal.
“Two of these washeries have already been inaugurated in Bharat Coal Coalfields and the rest are going to come up in a phased manner till December 2020. This will add a capacity of around 28.1 million tonnes (MT) for coking coal and 67.5 MT for non-coking coal,” Anindya Sinha, Advisor-Projects at the coal ministry said at an industry event here.
CIL is currently operating 15 coal washeries with a total capacity of 36.8 MT per year. Of these, 11 are coking and the rest are non-coking projects with a capacity of 20.58 and 16.22 MT per year, respectively. The total washed coal production from the existing washeries stood at 12.45 million tonnes last financial year.
The company said in its latest annual report the major bottlenecks for setting up of these projects include availability of land and environmental clearances. Failure of L1 bidders to comply to tender requirements, in addition to the absence of firm commitment from the intended customers regarding acceptance of washed coal at value-added prices, is also a challenge.
Sinha also said CIL has signed a pact with Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) for an environmental auditing system and the council has already audited around 20 coal mines of CIL and aims to complete all the mines within the current year.
Coal India has also conceived setting up a project for conversion of coal to methanol in Dankuni, West Bengal. “It has been on the approval stage. In each state, around 100 tonne of productive methanol plants are conceived in different areas,” Sinha said. Methanol to be produced at the Dankuni Coal Complex is expected to find a market in the eastern states. |
