Atanu Mukherjee, CEO of power engineering and advisory agency Dastur Power | Photograph courtesy of Particular Association.
India’s oil sector could more and more think about using pet coke (pet coke) to supply downstream merchandise equivalent to ammonia, urea, methanol and dimethyl ether (DME), amongst others, somewhat than promoting it instantly, Atanu Mukherjee, CEO of power engineering and advisory agency Duster Power, informed The Hindu.
“If you burn pet coke, it turns into very polluting,” he stated, including, “Alternatively, pet coke may also be extracted and transformed into various kinds of chemical compounds and molecules utilizing a course of known as gasification.”
Petroleum coke, or pet coke, is a carbon-rich strong residue produced within the processing of heavy refinery bottoms after lighter, higher-value merchandise have been extracted.
By utterly or partially burning the compound, it serves as a gasoline for cement, lime kilns, industrial boilers, and so on.
Mukherjee defined that the gasifier will likely be central to the method of manufacturing additional downstream merchandise. Oxygen and steam are used to partially oxidize pet coke, changing it into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, generally often known as syngas.
Dastur CEO explains that this can be utilized to fabricate DME and could be blended with LPG. Particularly methanol and methane.
Nonetheless, he emphasised that fine-tuning the gasifier and downstream course of configurations relying on the specified product slate and synthesis gasoline composition is important within the course of.
“How I fine-tune the gasifier based mostly on the wants of the top product that I would like is important to the design of the complicated, what merchandise I would like and what markets (to serve),” he stated.
Mukherjee added that the know-how is available in a number of international locations, together with the US, and could possibly be licensed within the brief time period by Indian refiners to finally construct capability for long-term necessities.
From a coverage perspective, Mukherjee argued that devoted repurposing of petroleum coke for “conversion somewhat than combustion” might assist facilitate this mechanism.
