The Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) has approved a project worth rupees 79.48 million to establish facilities for coal cleaning, coal gasification and coal combustion at the National Fuel Center (NFC) of Institute of Engineering and Technological Training Multan.
The project will be completed within three years time in collaboration with the Fuel Research Centre (FRC) of Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR) Karachi, Minister for Science and Technology Chaudhry Nouraiz Shakoor Khan said while highlighting the significance of the project. He termed the project as part of the government's initiative to explore and exploit indigenous fuel resources to reduce dependence on imported oil.
At present, the import bill of oil was around dollars two billion, which was 23 per cent of total export earning.
It is pertinent to note that Pakistan has huge reserves of coal, approximately 185 billion tons, but these deposits can be optimally utilised only with the strong back up of scientific organisations.
The government needs analysis and technical advisory services to materialise research results into pilot projects and then to transfer the know-how to industry.
The project, therefore, has direct linkage with the production sectors, which need clean coal for industrial use. It can prove vital for success of many future projects of energy sector. The sources at the MoST said Wapda was planning to increase the capacity of coal-fired plants from 50 MW to 4350 MW and three projects of 1200 MW each based on Thar coal. Thus the significance to indigenous coal to meet future energy needs of the country was obvious.
Nouraiz Shakoor further said coal could also salvage the cement industry problems, which was in bad shape because of heavy cost of fuel. The use of coal could be saving nearly Rs 495 million per year for a plant producing 3000 tons of cement per day. The use of furnace oil for producing one ton of cement was said to cost Rs 924 as against about Rs 374 with the use of coal.
SNGPL has also invited private and public sectors to install a coal based gasification plant for supply of gas to Bhakkar district.
However, the problem was that most of the Pakistani coals contain high amount of sulphur, ash and moisture and, therefore, detailed investigation and a pilot power plant was required before selecting the technology and module of commercial unit based on indigenous coal.