Coal Preparation - Recent Trends

Indian coal reserves constitute about 1% of the world reserve; the gross reserve is 1,92,884 million tonnes as on 01-01-1990, including Gondwana coalfields of tertiary coals (with high organic sulphur of North Eastern Coal-field) and tertiary lignite in Neyveli area etc., as shown in Table 1. Out of this, the coking coal reserve is only 28,690 million tonnes which is only 15% of the total. Again, out of the total coking coal (Table 2), hardly 18.5% is prime coking coal and about 27.5% is high volat-ile medium coking coal, a part of which is presently beneficiated for utilisation as blend charge for the coke ovens. But the low volatile medium coking coals comprising about 47.7% of the coking coal reserves remain unutilised or used in thermal power plants for want of suitable technology for their beneficiation.