Hustling to minimize India’s coking coal imports

Harendra Kumar & Shantanu Rai

Coking coal when heated in the absence of air in coke oven batteries produces metallurgical coke, which quenches the endothermic thirst of gigantic blast furnaces that produce hot metal, which is further preferentially oxidized and refined in Basic Oxygen Furnaces (BOF) to produce liquid steel, which then goes through several secondary metallurgy operations, and finally cast and rolled into products of desired shape and size.

India produced 106.56 million tons per annum (mtpa) of liquid steel in FY19 out of which 50.08 mtpa was produced through the conventional BF-BOF route.

The key benefits of this process are its robustness, mature technology, and high economies of scale & scope.

However, in the Indian context, this process suffers a serious drawback that is its critical dependency on coking coal.

Metallurgical coke plays a critical role in blast furnace route of iron making: provides the necessary heat required for the endothermic process, produces the reducing gas CO/CO 2 for indirect and direct reduction of iron oxides & agglomerates, supports the raw material burden and maintains permeability.

While the Coke rate (specific consumption of metallurgical coke/ton of hot metal) of globally best performing Blast Furnaces is ~300-350 Kgs/THM, that of the Indian blast furnaces is 450-550 Kgs/THM.

One of the major reasons behind this is the high alumina & silica content in the Indian iron ore.

As per Department of Commerce data, India imported around 51.84 million tons of coking coal during FY 19 spending around $10.32 billion, which was up by 11.76 percent against the corresponding figure of $9.23 billion in FY18.

Coking coal imports accounted for ~2 percent of overall imports in the country.

The National Steel Policy envisions that India will produce 300 mtpa of liquid steel by 2030-31.

The policy estimates that 60-65 percent of the production i.e. ~187.5 mtpa shall come thought the BF-BOF route, which will require 161 mtpa of coking coal. This is approx. three times the present coking coal consumption.

Looking at the status quo and future trends, it is clear that this very commodity is and going to be a significant contributor to our total import bill. Also, steel being a strategic commodity for our country heavy dependence on imports leaves us vulnerable to supply chain disruptions.

We have several risk mitigation tools at our end that can help us overcome this issue. These inter alia include:

1 ) Finding a solution to the Jharia issue: Jharia is the only coalfield in India with deposits of prime coking coal (estimated deposits: 5313.06 mt). The region has sufficient reserves to remove our dependence on imports and meet our demand for the foreseeable future of BF-BOF route of steelmaking in the country, which may around 70 years or so max before which scrapbased and other ITMK3 (Iron Making Technology Mark 3) steelmaking technologies completely take over. However, underground fires burning for centuries and the inability to relocate and rehabilitate the locals has prevented us from mining the reserves.

2) Proper Utilization of LVC (Low Volatile Coking) coals: India has deposits of around 33 billion tons of coking coal, of which 18 billion tons belong to the LVC category having 30-50 percent ash content.