Cleaning Up Coal - Ravi Deka

It’s ironic how the world’s two most used energy resources are the ones getting the worst rap.
Petroleum is invariably associated with fundamentalist medieval regimes or brutal foreign invasions under the self-righteous guise of ushering democracy. While Coal, which produces 41 % of the world’s and 68% of India’s electricity, is usually thought about only in terms of pollution, mafia, miners dying in explosions and in the recent years; scandals involving corrupt Indian politicians and their Crony-Capitalist friends.

Though boasting India’s first colliery but only having 0.37% of the country’s reserves, in  North Eastern India, it is also infamous  for the so-called Coal Syndicate of Assam and the notorious rat-hole mines of Meghalaya. The precarious conditions and safety records of the latter even made it to the pages of the L.A. Times, leading to the current mining ban imposed by the National Green Tribunal.

It just takes a short 20 minute ride from Assam's capital Guwahati towards Shillong to reach Byrnihat, Meghalaya’s industrial hub. Situated not too close to Guwahati to be a nuisance and far enough from Shillong to be of  concern, the acrid sulfurous air and the grey sky above the town is a testimony of primitive level industrialization gone amok and the corresponding lack of any environmental regulations.

The many Steel Rolling mills there, all use Pulverized Coal Combustion(PCC) in their reheating furnaces whilst Pollution control equipment is either not installed or just never used. Similarly, all of the 40 plus Coal Coking units located in Assam and Meghalaya use the non-recovery type Beehive Ovens, whose design dates back to the early epochs of the industrial revolution and consequently are a source of considerable atmospheric and water pollution. Metallurgical Coke is produced by burning off the volatile components of coal, consequently emitting a host of air pollutants like particulate matters or soot; volatile organic compounds, poly-nuclear aromatic hydrocarbons , methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, along with sulfur-nitrogen oxides, directly into the atmosphere. Later the Coke is quenched with water, whereby any remaining volatiles and elements like sulfur and mercury are leached into the ground eventually percolating to a running water body or the ground water table.

The outdated Steam Boilers installed in various factories, especially the Tea gardens are another example of archaic engineering entrenched in the field of coal combustion. Many are relics from another age, while others are age old designs still peddled by Boiler Manufacturers to unsuspecting buyers lokking for a cheap deal. The end result is the same; low efficiency, considerable wastage in unburned coal and high atmospheric pollution.
Preferring to adopt a policy of either total ban such as in Goa, or turning a blind eye as in Chhattisgarh and Odissa, till date none of the State governments in India have been able to constructively address the problem of Coal pollution, while the central government could never formulate a coherent Clean Coal policy. A fact testified by  the Coal and  Natural Gas burning Badarpur Thermal Power Plant in Delhi, which run by the government owned NTPC had been recently declared as the most polluting plant in the country.

So far the only Clean Coal technology that has caught the imagination of the Indian government and private sector, is the controversial and prohibitively expensive Coal to Liquid (CTL) process. Being touted a way to reduce petroleum imports, Oil India first announced a pilot project in 1998 and subsequently in 2006 along with Coal India Ltd., made press releases promising a $2.5 billion CTL plant in Assam. The topic kept surfacing in the news sporadically but with no actual project in sight.

 Tata-Sasol, a collaboration between India’s Tata Group and South African Petrochemical giant Sasol made a few headlines and raked up a few controversies with their plan of building a $10 billion CTL plant in Odissa with a capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil per day. Jindal Steel too has proposed to set up a CTL project next to their DRI plant in Angul district also with a capacity of 80,000 barrels per day of oil products. The two plants, at an estimated cost of Rs 90,000 crore are expected to come up by 2016. Even the “anti-everything” CM of West Bengal, Mamta Banerjee jumped on the CTL bandwagon and applied to the centre for a Rs 10,000-crore coal mining and coal-to-oil project in Bengal.

There is no denying the fact that liquid hydrocarbons can be derived from coal using the Bergius and the Fischer-Tropsch processes and during WWII Nazi Germany was totally dependent on coal based synthetic fuels. In 1944 its annual production exceeded 124,000 barrels per day from 25 plants. From 1955 onwards South Africa’s Sasol had been manufacturing synthetic fuels from coal due to the oil embargo against their Apartheid regime.
A CTL plant has three major divisions comprising of the gasification unit, the liquid conversion catalyst unit and a refinery section, which makes it prohibitively expensive project with a long gestation period. It also requires a lot of land, consumes huge amount of water (upto 15 barrels of water per barrel of fuel produced) and has an appallingly low conversion efficiency of only 42%, meaning more than half the coal’s energy is lost in the process.

With government policies swinging between apathetic and draconian, the private sector’s fixation on touting controversial mega projects for the sole purpose of securing Coal blocks and the undeniable existence of thousands of outdated coal burning industrial units that cannot be scrapped overnight, the eventuality of any realistic implementation of Clean Coal Technologies in India does actually seem very bleak.


Ravi Deka is an energy efficiency consultant and

CEO / Dir. Technology at Creatnet Technology Pvt Ltd.

www.rade.co.in
www.creatnettechnology.com

Screening Out the Shylocks - Ravi Deka

Some would be smart and sophisticated, others downright rude and crude. One will act as if he is doing  a great favour, another regard you with utmost suspicion as if dealing a thief and the third, talk so condescendingly one would think that you already owe him money. Lets accept it; friendly, sensible clients who pay on time and do it willingly and respectfully are far and in-between.

I wish I could write a true self-help style article about how to find great, paying clients.
Unfortunately, even after working for decades I am clueless about it and still have to put up with freeloaders, moochers and talk-you-downs on a weekly basis. Thus, as I lack both clairvoyance or the skills of Cold Reader, with wisdom garnered from innumerable  insipid professional experiences, I created a strict manifesto for screening out Shylocks amidst potential clients and regimenting my work.

1. Never Do it For Free.

If you are good in something never do it for free even if it is your hobby. If you do it as a favour a few times, very soon people would take you for granted and the moment you refuse you would become the bad guy. Only while interning or as an apprentice can one afford to do a few free assignments, but again solely for the purpose of gaining experience and a portfolio, where the client is essentially your Guinea Pig. Remember that the often-touted argument about proving yourself is a bogus pretext to make you work for free. If a client hires you, it should be solely on the basis of what you had already done and not what you would do for him for free to prove yourself.

2. No Detailed Write-ups or Concept Notes.

When potential clients ask you for a detailed write-up or proposal, limit it to a one-page teaser or a very short presentation. If you give them a comprehensive report, chances are that it would be plagiarized and someone else will get the credit or the work, usually both. Once a suave Auto magazine editor requested me to write a hard-selling proposal to a bike manufacturer for sponsoring a series of motorcycling travelogues. I wrote an impressive pitch and it got accepted, but instead of me, he got one of his servile staffers do the job. The resultant series was atrocious and it felt like karma working to see the magazine fold-up in a few months, but for me as a freelancer it was a loss of time and potential income, not to say faith in people.

3. Price yourself reasonably.

Have a fair idea of what your service is worth and charge accordingly. In case you have a specific USP, try pricing yourself a little over the market average. Don’t get greedy because the client is a large corporation or has deep pockets. Large corporations are staffed with scores of employees who are ballasts whose sole claim to productivity is either throwing a spanner in the works or  getting people work for free or a pittance. The man with deep pockets probably got there by cutting costs everywhere as well. However once you set your price, never baulk down because it would be discounts all the way thereafter.

4. Don’t share Business Intelligence.

 While it pays to give the protective client an insight of your knowledge and exposure to your field of expertise, stop short from divulging anything that may be considered as Business Intelligence. It may come as an innocuous request for a Google link or a block diagram, but remember that it can be relatively easy to extrapolate technical ideas or uncover business secrets after getting a hint. While it may be very easy for you to get the daily prices of wool in Kazakhstan thanks to your wife’s 3^rd cousin’s uncle, but for others it would either entail a trip there or involve purchasing an expensive subscription to an online service. Every bit of authentic information has a price, so share it selectively and only if you see a tangible return, either monetarily or by way of goodwill and confidence building: you can’t eat brownie points.

5. Make Them Pay for Travels.

If a potential client approaches you himself but is in another town or part of country and wants to meet you for an initial discussion, make sure he pays for the passage and your time, otherwise let him come down himself. There were several instances when would-be clients promise to reimburse the travel expenses and later stop picking up the phone or answering emails. And there are also freeloaders who start or interject the conversation with “when are you planning to visit ……….(insert their location)”, but at least they are more honest. They declare upfront their lack of intent of paying for the journey, which automatically implies that they aren’t likely to compensate for your time, knowledge and work either.

6.  Limit Preliminary Interaction to Basics.

If the prospective client only wants to discuss again and again over phone or face to face but with no hint of any forth-coming payment, drop him, as he is either a time-waster or picking your brains for free. By the third meeting, long telephonic discussion or Skype conversation, one should know whether the deal is on or off and how much it would be worth. I had both former, as well as new potential clients call me up for hours at a time to discuss their forthcoming projects or technical designs, but the moment I asked for an advance they disappeared like a “Bat Out Of Hell” before the first rays of the sun ( I first wanted to give an analogy of me running away from a Transvestite Prostitute).

7. Recognize a Politician’s Promises.

 Don’t be led tales of  “grand opportunity, golden tomorrow” or in the  "we are in this together" pitch. It’s just a carrot on a stick, a ploy to exploit you or use your knowledge and contacts for free or at a discount. A genuine client should be first focused on what you can do for him today and not what you would get tomorrow.

8. Forgo Temptations of Ownership.

No client who hints of bringing you on board as a partner, but is also the main investor would ever treat you as an equal even if he or she fulfills the promise. In most cases, especially in South Asia it’s just another carrot and stick technique to make you work harder, for free or a pittance.

9. Real Friends Pay and also Deliver.

The only acid test in a professional relation between a client and a service provider is that of fees being paid and proper services rendered. Friendship is reserved for picnics and bars. Moreover, true friends always pay for the goods and services availed, and in turn shouldn’t also be  slackers or delivering half-baked services.

10. Don't get “wowed” by Loud Names.

They may be fortune 500 companies, but the people contacting you are usually lowly managers with limited clout on the lookout for a sucker who would initially work for free or peanuts in the hope of bagging a big account. In case they succeed in finding a sucker, its laurels for them, but in case something goes wrong, it’s your fault. Either way they remain safe, while you take the brunt on you professional reputation and finances.



Ravi Deka is an energy efficiency consultant and

CEO / Dir. Technology at Creatnet Technology Pvt Ltd.

www.rade.co.in
www.creatnettechnology.com