Govt to restart five fertilizer units
A Rs.13,000 crore coal gasification plant to produce urea is being restarted by using technology from Air Products of the United States, the success of which will also reopen four other fertilizer plants.
The erstwhile Talcher plant of Fertilizer Corporation of India Ltd (FCIL) will produce 1.27 MMTPA of Urea using indigenous coal and petcoke sourced from a local refinery.
The Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister Sadananda Gowda and the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan presided over the coal-gasification contact award ceremony in New Delhi on 17 September 2019.
The Government is investing Rs.37,971 crore in reviving the five closed plants to increase local urea production. These are closed FCIL and Hindustan Fertilizer Corp Ltd (HFCL) units at Sindri, Barauni, Ramagundam, Gorakhpur and Talcher.
Currently, India imports about 50 to 70 lakh tonnes of urea every year to meet demand from local farmers. Local production is around 241 lakh metric tonnes while consumption is 305 million lakh tonnes.
Pointing out the high cost of imported natural gas for producing urea, Gowda said efforts are to use indigenous raw material for production of urea and other fertilizers in the country.
Talcher Fertilizers Limited (TFL) is implementing this Coal Gasification based on Ammonia/Urea Project under Government’s flagship program of reviving closed fertilizer units.
Coal for the project will be sourced from TFL’s captive Northern part of North Arkhapal mine in Talcher region. Petcoke will be sourced from Paradip refinery for the project.
The US-based Air Product’s petcoke-coal blending state-of-the-art technology have been selected for gasification processes.
The success of this technology will also propel usage of coal for production of other products like, syngas, diesel, methanol, petrochemicals etc.
Gowda said the technology would be a potential game changer in Indian context due to the harnessing of coal through cleaner technologies in sectors other than power.
The revived Talcher plant will also produce 2.38 MMSCMD of Natural Gas equivalent Syngas, reducing LNG import bill.
Being environmentfriendly, the project will help meet India’s commitments to CoP-21 Paris Agreement.
More than 200 Coal Gasifiers plants are operational and produces Syngas (SNG), Ammonia/Urea, Methanol and various petrochemicals. fiinews.com
