Coal news and updates

With governments still pondering over best suited solution to address worsening air pollution in the National Capital, the country’s largest power producer, NTPC, has taken the lead by proposing to partially replace coal with pellets made of paddy straw and other agricultural residue to generate electricity in 35,000 MW of its power plants.

 

Burning of paddy straw and other agricultural residue in fields has been one of the major causes of air pollution that affects Delhi and the rest of north India every winter. Agricultural residues, which do not get priority in the form of cattle fodder, are burnt in the fields by the farmers after harvesting. Sources said that the NTPC has decided on biomass co-firing at all its coal-fired plants in phases and the first such exercise has already been started at 200 MW units at PSU’s Dadri plant near Delhi.

 

The use of pellets made of farm residue with coal is called biomass co-firing. “We have already issued expression of interest (EoI) for the supply of pellets made of agricultural residues at 20 power plants located across the country. These plants have a total consumption of 19,440 tonnes per day, thereby creating a market of around Rs 5,000 crore,” said the source quoted earlier. “Thus, about 145 million tonnes of farm residue being burnt in the fields every year across country if fully utilised by biomass co-firing in power plants, it can produce about 30,000 MW electricity round the year. This is equivalent to electricity generated from solar panels of 1,50,000 MW capacity in a year. Along with this, there could be a market of about Rs 1 lakh crore,” the source added.

 

Last year the government decided to involve to support its initiative of making farm stubble remunerative for the farmers so that it is not burnt causing wide scale pollution in the national capital region (NCR).

 

The NTPC plan for current year is expected to make visible changes in the air pollution levels in north Indian states. Burning of agricultural residues not only reduces the fertile strength of the soil but also releases huge amounts of ash in air which suddenly, increases the level of PM 2.5 and PM10 in the air. Its contribution to the air pollution is seasonal, but it temporarily spoils the air quality very badly. For this reason, the Delhi NCR region has been going through the grip of dense smog for the last few weeks in the month of October to November for last many years.

 

Involvement of a large corporate entity is expected to encourage the collection and storage of agricultural residues and the investment in the field of manufacturing pellets / torrefied pellets made of agro residue. This will create a market for agricultural residues, which will discourage the practice of stubble burning.

 

According to reliable sources, ash generated from combustion of agro residue based fuel in power plant gets absorbed in the electro-static precipitator of the plant besides generating electricity, thus does not cause air pollution.

 

Also, the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted from its combustion in plant, is absorbed in the next crop cycle by photosynthesis, which does not increase the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Therefore, agricultural residue based fuel is a better source of renewable energy or green energy. Therefore, the use of pellets made of agricultural residues in power plants will reduce carbon emissions and reduce the global warming crisis.

 

Mixing of pellets up to 10 per cent of the total fuel in a power plant is possible without affecting its efficiency in terms of gross calorific value. On an average a farmers get around 2 tonnes of stubble or straw in an acre. NTPC is expected to buy the pellets made from farm residue at a rate of around Rs 5,500 per tonne.

 

Source: mydigitalfc.com