Tata Steel is on the cusp of developing a breakthrough technology that will significantly reduce ash content in coal
For a scientist who is passionate about history, Mark Denys appreciates the importance of the West Bokaro coalfields in the Indian clean coal technology space. It was in these coalfields in Jharkhand that Tata Steel set up the country’s first coal washery in 1951. The washery reduced the coal’s ash content from as much as 35 percent to 18 percent, improving the fuel’s efficiency and extending the life of the mines.
More than half a century later, the head of Tata Steel’s R&D and Scientific Services realises that the coalfields’ next brush with history might well depend on his team. Denys and his colleagues at the company’s R&D centre in Jamshedpur are in the advanced stages of developing the next generation of clean coal technology. The new method will further reduce ash content in the West Bokaro coal to 8 percent, a significant improvement from present standards of about 13-15 percent. The technology, the first of its kind to be developed by an Indian company, also promises to double the yield of these mines.
Denys realises how much that means for the country’s largest steelmaker. Tata Steel already imports half of its coal despite owning mines in West Bokaro and Jharia, also in Jharkhand. “This [the new technology] will decrease our dependency on costly imported coal, reduce our exposure to the coal price market fluctuations and to the dramatic changes in the currency exchange rates like we see today,” says Denys, who earlier was in charge of Ironmaking Research at Corus, the British company Tata Steel acquired in 2007.
MAKING PROGRESS
(This story appears in the 03 August, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)