Japanese and Pakistani engineers have agreed that Thar coal has the potential to produce ammonia, urea, methanol, hydrogen, and oil by conversion of coal into other forms of fuel.
This was said at Symposium on “Innovative Thar Coal Value Chain” organised by Pakistan Academy of Engineering (PAE) here on Saturday in collaboration with Institute of Applied Energy and New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan.
Dr Jameel Ahmed Khan, the president of the PAE welcomed the guests and the opening ceremony was followed by a keynote address by NEDO head Takashi Nakamoton, where talked on NEDO activities on Clean Coal Technologies.
The speakers at the symposium were of the view that Pakistan is an energy importing country; it paid $12 billion for import of crude oil and petroleum products during the year 2014-15 which was a 30 per cent of the total value of imports.
In the year, total available energy was slightly over 72 million tonnes of oil equivalents (TOE). Crude oil and petroleum products accounted for 25.4 million TOE i.e. 36 percent of the total primary energy supplies of 70.2 million TOE.
The indigenous production of crude oil contributed only 18.2 percent. Here the significant aspect is that transport sector alone consumed 32.4 percent of the total energy consumed by the country.
The experts also talked about the production of chemicals from Thar coal which will be a conversion into value added products. Pakistan can have the modern coal chemical industry to become the biggest highlight of our high-end development of the petroleum and chemical industry and the growth point with the biggest competitive advantage.
The preliminary feasibility study was conducted by the Institute of Applied Energy, Japan, in cooperation with Pakistan Academy of Engineering and many related organisations.
This project was financially supported by the NEDO, Japan.
Based on the data of Thar coal and field survey of the mining site, the technical study and economic evaluation was conducted to produce Ammonia, Urea, Methanol, Hydrogen, and oil from Thar coal, using Japanese technologies.
The cost of Methanol and Urea was estimated to be in the range of market prices from long-term point of view, depending on coal and oil prices and the market prices of the chemicals. More studies are required to realise the project using Thar coal.
