The Government will soon start a ‘National Mission on Clean Coal Technologies', its ninth under the National Action Plan for Climate Change, Dr R. Chidambaram, Scientific Advisor to Government of India, said here today.
The Mission will foster work on Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), Advanced Ultra Supercritical technology and Carbon Capture and Sequestration, among other areas, Dr Chidambaram said, while speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the fourth edition of the Conference on ‘Automotive R&D Trends 2015', organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
He said that NTPC has given a proposal for an IGCC project. Asked about the ongoing IGCC project of APGENCO and BHEL, he said that the Government is considering the release of the grant of Rs 300 crore for the project. (Such a grant was announced over five years ago.)
The Advanced Ultra Supercritical Technology looks at thermal power boiler that operates at very high temperatures (upwards of 700 degrees Celsius) and pressure (350 bar).
As a consequence of this, the consumption of coal (and therefore emissions) will be lower.
Today, the ‘supercritical technology' has stabilised in the country, with several projects coming up. The next stage is ultra supercriticals. Advanced ultra supercriticals take it a step further.
Coal Capture and Sequestration entails capturing the emissions (such as those out of a power plant) and putting them somewhere safely away, as into a ‘geological repository'— hole deep down in the earth. The issue here is that the CCS process itself is energy-intensive.
Earlier, addressing the conference, Dr Chidambaram made a strong pitch for the industry to work with academia. He wanted companies that recruit young scientists to put their recruits under the tutelage of a professor.
Academia can help a lot in pre-competitive research, he stressed.
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