The ongoing war in West Asia has plunged the world into a deep vitality disaster. In India, the provision of home gas, LPG, has been hit due by the disruption in provides from the Persian Gulf. The international vitality disaster is harking back to the Oil Shock of 1973 when members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) lower oil manufacturing and slashed exports to protest the U.S.’s help for Israel within the Yom Kippur War. India responded by exploring various sources of vitality, offshore oilfields in Bombay High, and by experimenting with new applied sciences.
One technological choice that discovered a second life this manner was coal gasification.
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The thought of utilizing gasified coal to fulfill a few of India’s gas 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 gas gas produced from gasifying of coal and its provide by means of pipelines for home and industrial use. Zaheer believed gas gas of excessive calorific worth might be produced by utterly gasifying non-caking fuels similar to shale coal, lignite, and bituminous coal, all present in India.
‘Town Gas Supply Scheme’
The know-how concerned gasifying coal utilizing excessive stress to kind hydrocarbons and utilizing oxygen to keep up 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 recuperate elemental sulphur.
The gas was additional cleaned utilizing water scrubbing to take away any remaining particulate matter.
In the Nineteen Forties, coal gasification was used at a industrial 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 town. If a gasification plant was established at Kothagudem, gas might be equipped not solely to Hyderabad but additionally to a number of cities alongside the 290-km-long route, per the plan. Based on surveys of gas consumption, inhabitants and demand projections, household revenue, and gas demand tendencies, Zaheer proposed a stress gasification plant of seven.5 million cubic toes capability, and advised the gas pipeline might be laid alongside the railway monitor to facilitate simple upkeep and inspections.
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Tough going
To reveal the know-how’s feasibility, pilot research have been wanted, which in flip required funding. Zaheer’s thought didn’t discover any takers within the Central authorities or the CSIR. On the vitality entrance, the coverage focus on the time was on discovering petroleum reserves and the event of nuclear vitality, moreover harnessing hydroelectric energy from massive dams.
So in 1961, Zaheer urged Nehru to make a coverage determination to determine a number of vegetation for manufacturing city gas primarily based on coal gasification in choose coal belts and linking them by means of a countrywide grid. Nehru appreciated 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 effectively 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 bought a probability to implement his thought to develop a pilot plant at RRLH. But the going was not simple 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 huge 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 venture got here to a halt as quickly as Zaheer’s time period resulted in 1966. His successor, Atma Ram, fashioned a committee to evaluate the venture. The panel gave an opposed report saying “it would not be advisable to establish and operate the plant in a manner proposed by RRLH” and advised that the imported tools be disposed of.
Back then, there was sturdy opposition to CSIR labs organising pilot vegetation to reveal applied sciences that they had developed. This was regardless of the RRLH having already been working a profitable semi-commercial pilot plant on one other coal know-how: 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 effectively.
‘Had we listened…’
After a number of opinions and controversies, the coal gasification venture at RRLH acquired the go-ahead in 1972 and the crates of imported equipment have been opened seven years after that they had landed in Hyderabad. The venture additionally acquired an sudden enhance: the Oil Shock in October 1973. The scarcity of petroleum merchandise despatched the federal government scurrying for various 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 know-how had moved to the subsequent stage. The pilot plant was used as a check 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 technology. 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 gas 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 know-how journey. He is at the moment engaged on a biography of Syed Husain Zaheer.
Published – March 19, 2026 07:30 am IST