The ongoing war in West Asia has plunged the world into a deep power disaster. In India, the supply of home gasoline, LPG, has been hit due by the disruption in provides from the Persian Gulf. The international power disaster is paying homage to the Oil Shock of 1973 when members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reduce oil manufacturing and slashed exports to protest the U.S.’s assist for Israel within the Yom Kippur War. India responded by exploring different sources of power, offshore oilfields in Bombay High, and by experimenting with new applied sciences.
One technological choice that discovered a second life this fashion was coal gasification.
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The concept of utilizing gasified coal to fulfill a few of India’s gasoline wants first emerged in 1955 when Syed Husain Zaheer, director of the Regional Research Laboratory Hyderabad (RRLH) — now the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) — and later director-general of CSIR, submitted a plan to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for a cross-country nationwide gas grid. The plan envisaged the usage of gasoline gas produced from gasifying of coal and its provide by way of pipelines for home and industrial use. Zaheer believed gasoline gas of excessive calorific worth may very well be produced by fully gasifying non-caking fuels resembling shale coal, lignite, and bituminous coal, all present in India.
‘Town Gas Supply Scheme’
The expertise concerned gasifying coal utilizing excessive stress to type hydrocarbons and utilizing oxygen to take care of a excessive thermal effectivity. It began with changing the sulphur current within the coal to hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and small quantities of carbonyl sulphide (COS). Sulphur compounds are then faraway from the gas stream and separated acid gas is additional processed to get well elemental sulphur.
The gas was additional cleaned utilizing water scrubbing to take away any remaining particulate matter.
In the Forties, coal gasification was used at a business scale to offer city gas for avenue lighting in Europe and the U.S. But the idea’s techno-economic feasibility had but to be established for Indian coal.
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To begin with, Zaheer proposed a “Town Gas Supply Scheme” for Hyderabad primarily based on gasifying the coal discovered within the Singareni collieries and piping it to the town. If a gasification plant was established at Kothagudem, gas may very well be provided not solely to Hyderabad but in addition to a number of cities alongside the 290-km-long route, per the plan. Based on surveys of gasoline consumption, inhabitants and demand projections, household earnings, and gasoline demand traits, Zaheer proposed a stress gasification plant of seven.5 million cubic ft capability, and steered the gas pipeline may very well be laid alongside the railway observe to facilitate straightforward upkeep and inspections.
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Tough going
To show the expertise’s feasibility, pilot research have been wanted, which in flip required funding. Zaheer’s concept didn’t discover any takers within the Central authorities or the CSIR. On the power entrance, the coverage focus on the time was on discovering petroleum reserves and the event of nuclear power, in addition to harnessing hydroelectric energy from massive dams.
So in 1961, Zaheer urged Nehru to make a coverage choice to determine a number of vegetation for manufacturing city gas primarily based on coal gasification in choose coal belts and linking them by way of a countrywide grid. Nehru favored the plan and noticed that it was “a modern and more economical method, and it will bring enormous relief to the railways”. But the Ministry of Steel, Mines and Fuel pointed to the “infeasibility of the plan for transporting gas over long distances”. The Planning Commission, the Coal Council, and the CSIR as properly remained chilly to the proposal and have been reluctant to fund a pilot plant to check coal gasification.
When Nehru appointed Zaheer the CSIR director-general in 1962, Zaheer acquired a likelihood to implement his concept to develop a pilot plant at RRLH. But the going was not straightforward because the plan required importing tools. The wars of 1962 and 1965 didn’t assist, delaying the procurement of equipment from Germany, and there was a large value overrun because of the devaluation of the rupee.
The pilot plant for coal gasification arrange by the Regional Research Laboratory,
Hyderabad.
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives
The challenge got here to a halt as quickly as Zaheer’s time period led to 1966. His successor, Atma Ram, shaped a committee to evaluate the challenge. The panel gave an antagonistic report saying “it would not be advisable to establish and operate the plant in a manner proposed by RRLH” and steered that the imported tools be disposed of.
Back then, there was robust opposition to CSIR labs organising pilot vegetation to show applied sciences they’d developed. This was regardless of the RRLH having already been operating a profitable semi-commercial pilot plant on one other coal expertise: low temperature carbonisation. Following the RRLH mannequin, the National Chemicals Laboratory in Pune and the Indian Institute of Petroleum in Dehradun erected pilot vegetation as properly.
‘Had we listened…’
After a number of opinions and controversies, the coal gasification challenge at RRLH acquired the go-ahead in 1972 and the crates of imported equipment have been opened seven years after they’d landed in Hyderabad. The challenge additionally acquired an surprising enhance: the Oil Shock in October 1973. The scarcity of petroleum merchandise despatched the federal government scurrying for different fuels, recognising that “in the perspective of the country’s long-term energy requirements, consideration should be given to installing small to medium coal gasification plants to produce gas”.
“It is now abundantly clear that a coal-based energy strategy is the only realistic course for us,” Prime Minister Indira Gandhi introduced, recognising the previous errors. In her inaugural speech on the Indian Science Congress session at Bhubaneswar in January 1977, she admitted, “Had we listened, in the early ‘60s, to Dr Husain Zaheer’s plea, and based our chemical feedstock policy not merely on oil but on the abundant coal reserves, we would have withstood the oil crisis with much less strain.”
However, by the point RRLH erected the coal gasification pilot plant, the expertise had moved to the following stage. The pilot plant was used as a take a look at mattress for analysis on the built-in gasification mixed cycle (IGCC), in collaboration with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), which commissioned the primary such plant in 1985. Unlike coal gasification to provide city gas, IGCC mixed gas manufacturing from coal with electrical energy era. The syngas produced by gasifying coal was used to run a energy plant producing electrical energy. Gas-fired generators have been used to provide electrical energy and the surplus warmth was routed to steam-driven generators.
Second wind
Although India started early with gasoline R&D with nationwide laboratories engaged in coal, petroleum, and geophysics analysis, the funding was suboptimal and tasks lacked the mandatory industrial linkages. Policymakers and competing pursuits didn’t see the necessity for long-term analysis on this space.
Interest in clear coal applied sciences has been revived as local weather motion has intensified. The National Coal Gasification Mission, which India launched in 2021, goals to gasify 100 million tonnes of coal by 2030. “The adoption of gasification technology in India will revolutionise the coal sector, reducing reliance on imports of natural gas, methanol, ammonia and other essential products,” in keeping with a authorities assertion.
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Massive investments to the tune of Rs 85,000 crore have been dedicated to the Mission. Coal India Limited and BHEL additionally floated a new firm, Bharat Coal Gasification & Chemicals Limited, in 2024 to work on clear coal applied sciences.
Dinesh C. Sharma is a New Delhi-based journalist and creator, and has written books on India’s post-1947 science and expertise journey. He is at the moment engaged on a biography of Syed Husain Zaheer.
Published – March 19, 2026 07:30 am IST
