IIT-BHU to establish Coal Quality Management and Utilization Research Centre
IIT-BHU to establish Coal Quality Management and Utilization Research Centre
Varanasi: The IIT-BHU in collaboration with the Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL) is going to establish a new research center – Coal Quality Management and Utilization Research Centre at the oldest Mining Engineering Department in the country, which came into existence in 1923.
The center will be the first of its kind in the country with Academic–Industry MoU, equipped with the state of art facility for conducting research on clean coal technology in order to increase the quality of coal, and also cater the facility for determining the quality and grade of coal for adjoining stakeholders and traders.
The IIT-BHU director Prof. Pramod Kumar Jain said that the need for clean coal with sustainable mining and lowering of carbon footprint of mining was identified as a global and national research theme. Keeping in mind this theme, the Coal Quality Management and Utilization Centre was envisioned.
He said this scientific effort and collective endeavors of IIT-BHU and NCL would enable us to realize the vision of an affordable, efficient and compact reliable clean coal supply to coal consumers at one place and reduction of carbon emission as per Paris Agreement at another place. He further stated that the Institute will be facilitating all such efforts and complementing and supplementing both in terms of technological knowledge, training of man power adequately for strengthening the coal industries in general and coal consumers in particular. Prof Jain emphasized the need for accelerated clean coal which is a major source of energy in India.
According to him, the objective of the Centre is academically to create knowledge and develop human resources through doctoral research, post graduate dissertations and B. Tech projects at one hand and professionally to cater to the needs of the industry for cleaner coal availability. The facility of this centre will be used by the students and research scholars working in the area of coal characterization, coal quality improvement and coal grading along with biomass and biofuels researchers. Not only this, the centre will also cater the need of coal producing and coal-based industries in northern and central India in general and Puruvanchal (eastern UP) in particular.
The possible users of the center will be coal producing companies like Coal India Limited and its subsidiaries, private coal companies, and coal-based industries like National Thermal Power Corporation, State power plants and private sectors power plants etc. Besides these, railways, Income tax department and coal traders may also avail the facilities of this centre for knowing the actual quality and grade of coal for different utilization, evaluation and marketing purposes.
Creation of ecosystem for research and development and innovation involving all stakeholders is a priority of the day and IIT (BHU) plans to have novel mechanism to encourage more and more research and manpower skill development through collaboration with coal producing and coal consuming sectors, and also inviting industry professionals to enhance their educational qualification and up gradation of skills through research and training.
The IIT-BHU through MoU with NCL has already started joint PhD programs where laboratory facility, mine/ field data will be used to make coal mining technology and environment more technologically viable and economically feasible with environmentally friendly mining.
The primary goal of this centre is to address several critical R and D challenges towards the development of clean coal technologies for specifically high ash containing Indian coal, for supply to super critical power plant technologies both at coal quality and system level.
