National Centre for Clean Coal Research and Development inaugurated

With the aim of addressing opportunities and challenges in development of clean coal technologies, Union Minister of Science & Technology Harsh Vardhan inaugurated the National Centre for Clean Coal Research and Development (NCCCR&D) at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru. The NCCCR&D has been launched at IISc. by Department of Science & Technology (DST).

National Centre for Clean Coal Research and Development (NCCCR&D)

It is a national consortium on clean coal research and development led by IISc. The partner of IISc includes IIT- Kharagpur, Madras, Guwahati, Bombay, and Hyderabad.

The consortium will work on identifying existing gaps in clean coal technology as major problem being faced by Indian power plants is high level of pollutants and low thermal efficiency.

The new centre would address several critical Research & Development (R&D) challenges towards development of clean coal technologies in tandem with developing supercritical power plant technologies, both at materials and system level.

The centre will also address challenges such as development of low emission combustion and gasification, and achieve high cycle efficiencies with reduced pollutants. IISc. has already set-up an advanced indigenous supercritical CO2 test loop at a laboratory scale.

Significance:

Scientific and collective endeavours like NCCCR&D would enable achievement of an affordable, efficient, and compact reliable clean energy system.

It would help India in achieving international targets and ‘nationally determined contributions’ on climate change which inlcudes-

• To have at-least 40% of our total requirement of energy to be from clean energy sources by 2030 (of this India have already achieved around 34-35%)
• Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) by 33% to 35% by 2030

Target beneficiaries of NCCCR&D: It includes national organisations such as the Gas Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL), National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Bharat Heavy Electronics Ltd. (BHEL), Triveni Turbines Ltd and Tata Power.

Month: Current Affairs - September, 2019