India\u2019s coal imports are rising because the relatively high calorific value of imported coal outweighs the locally mined fuel. However, this leaves the ports with some areas of environmental concern – after all, India is notorious for its old, shallow draught ports and Suren Vakil of BMT Asia admits that the way of getting around this used to be predominantly by lighterage \u2013 transferring the coal to barges mid-sea.<\/p>\n
\u201cIts not just coal; mid-sea transfer is the worst for the environment, after all, you have two moving ships, some goes in, but some always gets spilt,\u201d says Mr Vakil.<\/p>\n
There are other issues. Even with more depth and straight unloading from ship to truck, grabs tend to create dust. Further, you can\u2019t just rely on someone moving around with a hose, as the smaller, more damaging particulate sizes get entrained in the air without being efficiently brought down by large water droplets.<\/p>\n
Despite this, says Mr Vakil, things are looking up. The spurt of energy imports has meant a general improvement in the quality of handling infrastructure: \u201cMany of the new ports are located close to the existing or planned power stations; Mundra is the biggest, and despite it being a multipurpose port it has a large element of bulk destined for the nearby energy facility. Other places like Pipavav and Krishnapatnam are also rising in importance \u2013 partly due to their proximity to existing or planned power stations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Double edged sword \u201cA lot of the newer ports are private operations. They have every reason to push for bigger volumes, and this means things like high quality continuous unloaders, with conveyor belts and integral pollution control solutions,\u201d explains Mr Vakil.<\/p>\n So while you still have a range of bulk ports, with varying levels of environmental mitigation measures in place, Mr Vakil adds that it is \u201cgenerally going in the right direction\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cFurther, the environmental approving process around these newer ports has steadily become more stringent, so every port is better than the last. Each proposal is presented to the Environmental Committee in Delhi, and it\u2019s only ever cleared with a list of provisos \u2013 which are monitored,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n However, it is a balance: \u201cThe new ports give economies of scale which brings costs down, but against this, there are the rising investment needs \u2013 partly pushed by environmental concerns.\u201d However, he points out, this will only go one way as the ship to barge transfers aren\u2019t particularly economical, and there is so much waste associated with them that on this basis alone you would be looking at better solutions.<\/p>\n LNG imports Because this fuel is destined for the grid rather than for onward transportation, some issues around LNG\u2019s superchilled temperature of -160 degrees C are avoided. However, Suren Vakil explains that it still does need to have a regasification facility: \u201cThe LNG comes in as a cold liquid, discharged via loading arms on the quayside. It is stored still in its liquid form in tanks and then regasified before distribution into the grid as CNG.\u201d<\/p>\n Further, an extra option for the port is using the newly chilled air in its cold storage facilities, so it\u2019s a win-win situation.\u201d<\/p>\n However, this regasification unit doesn\u2019t have to take up valuable space on the quay. In fact, BMT is currently designing a Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) near to Pipavav for Swan Energy. It\u2019s essentially just another LNG ship tied up to the wharf which recieves the fuel before pumping it into the local grid.<\/p>\n The tidal considerations are minimal because the two vessels – the discharge and the regasification ship – float up and down the same rate. The link to the shore side can be more engineered, more permanent \u2013 although the joy of this kind of facility is that if necessary, it can all be moved.<\/p>\n There are safety considerations to LNG and you need a very detailed hazard study, well thought out procedures \u2013 and a large, clear \u2018envelope\u2019 of space around the facilities: \u201cFor this reason alone it wouldn\u2019t be something that you would want in a city port,\u201d says Mr Vakil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The pull of Indian power is having an impact on the subcontinent\u2019s port operations. Stevie Knight looks at the issues around both solid and cooled liquid energy sources<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":3640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-3639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3641,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3639\/revisions\/3641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3639"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=3639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong>It\u2019s going to be a double edged sword for the environment. You have to admit that these power stations mostly run on coal, and that this is the pragmatic choice by a government that is being pushed by both domestic and industrial demand for a huge amount of reliable power. But against the environmental footprint, it is worthwhile understanding that these rising bulk volumes are also dragging the infrastructure up with it.<\/p>\n
<\/b>The other aspect is the rise of LNG. This is being used both in straight domestic applications and in some of the power stations. LNG is also used as a fuel by a variety of industries as an alternative to coal. \u201cIt makes for good, cleaner power\u201d, says Mr Vakil, and some of the ports are taking advantage of the fuel already, such as Hazira, Dahej and Kochi.<\/p>\n