By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, APRIL 19, 2013: A task force constituted by the Ministry of Coal to work out the policy issues of coal beneficiation is likely to submit its findings shortly. This was announced by Minister of Coal, Mr Sriprakash Jaiswal. He was addressing the inaugural session of the “International Conference & Expo on Coal Beneficiation” being organised by the ‘Coal Preparation Society of India’ (CPSI) here yesterday. The theme of the Conference was ‘Beneficiation of Indian Coal: capacity augmentation and technological up gradation for efficient use & environmental sustainability’. He said that there is urgent need to make coal more environment friendly with proper planning and implementation right from conceptual stage.

Underling the importance of making fuel clean, Mr Jaiswal said that coal is the main stay of our energy and would continue to play critical role for quite some time in our future energy plans and providing energy security. It should be our endeavor to make this fuel clean for efficient use in different sectors. He said that use of coal as mined is not easy in view of the contaminants that are inherent in the coal seams and requires cleaning of run of mine coal to a desired level so that quality aspects and concerns of consumers are properly addressed. More over environmental considerations are likely to enhance the use of washed coal manifold. Mr Jaiswal said that coal companies should work to address issue of additional washery capacities. Washing of coal fetches better value of the product on the basis of current GCV based coal pricing and should not be an issue, he stressed. “The performance of existing washeries is a matter of concern and the coal companies need to address the issue on priority for their improved performance. At the same time coal companies need to strengthen the infrastructure for coal sampling and analysis with latest technologies”, the Coal Minister said.

Highlighting the improved performance of Coal India Limited in recent months, Mr Jaiswal said Country’s coal production in the recently concluded financial year 2012-13 has reached 557.45 million tonnes registering a growth of 3.2% over the previous year. Coal India Limited has registered a growth of 7.41% in off-take in 2012-13 over the previous year. CIL supplied 344.50 million tonnes of coal to power utilities in 2012-13, thereby registered a growth of 10.39% over previous year. Coal supply to NTPC also registered an impressive growth rate of 14.81 % over the previous year.