Power plant efficiency can reduce coal’s eco impact
Our Bureau

Gandhinagar, Nov. 14 Technology such as carbon capturing and storage (CCS) or combine heat and power should be extensively used in manufacturing processes if the environmental impact of coal-based generation has to be minimised in India, according to Dr Kirit Parikh, Member of Planning Commission and a former member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.

“Environmental impact of coal-based generation can be minimised through cleaning or de-sulphurising of coal or application of technologies such as CCS. Another option is to reduce the use of coal.

“In India, our power plants run with efficiency of around 30 per cent, while in Germany, plants with super-critical boilers easily achieve around 46 per cent efficiency. Higher efficiency reduces the use of coal. If our plants are also equipped with such boilers, they can also operate with higher efficiency, at least 40 per cent, despite the fact that India is hotter than Germany. If the plants are equipped with ultra super critical boilers, the efficiency can be raised to 50 per cent,” he said.

He was speaking at the Clean Coal Technology summit organised by the Centre for Energy Studies and Research and the Centre for Fuel Studies and Research at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University.

“Engineering, energy and electronics were mainly responsible for economic and industrial growth we have witnessed so far, but now onwards energy along with environment and education will be the main focus. This underscores the importance of clean coal technologies, as it helps in meeting the energy demand in an environment-friendly manner,” said Mr Vinayak Buch, former Vice-Chairman, SSNL.

Available resources

To meet the growing domestic power demand, the available resources are nuclear, solar and wind power. “The first one is reliable source, but huge scale capacity addition is not possible due to certain limitations. In case of solar power, the cost of production is as high as Rs 20 per unit against cost of Rs 2.50 for coal-based generation. This makes it unaffordable.

“Wind energy can make some difference, but total potential in India for such kind of power generation is said to be in the range of 65,000 MW to one lakh MW, which is far behind the total requirement. So we are left with no option other than to continue with coal-fired power generation,” said Mr Parikh.

Use of CHP, where heat generated through burning of feedstock can be used to generate power can help reduce emissions, he added.

A paper presented by Dr D.M. Kale spoke about the island-country Tuvalu, which is predicted to submerge due to the rising sea level, but has set a target of generating all power through wind or solar energy by 2020