Team News Riveting
Bhopal, December 13
The two-day International Conference on Opencast Mining Technology and Sustainability (ICOMS) was inaugurated at the headquarters of Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL) in Singrauli of Madhya Pradesh today.
The conference aims to provide forum for the peers and blossoms of the academicians, scientific community & industry professionals to interact and exchange their knowledge in the field of Opencast Mines and Energy.
Dr. Anil Kumar Jain Secretary of Government of India, Ministry of Coal, gave thrust on the identification of critical areas, challenges & opportunities in the coal sector. He also exhorts for Research & Development to add value in terms of Clean Coal, Coal gasification, reduction of ash content, energy efficiency in a mining operation to make nation ‘self-reliant in the Coal Sector.
He was speaking in the inaugural session of the International Conference on Opencast Mining Technology and Sustainability being held at headquarters of NCL at Singrauli on Monday, joining virtually from MCL Odisha.
He also emphasized induction of technology in coal operation, handling of Coal & OB as well as Coal Transportation is a need of the hour for greater sustainability. He congratulated the CMD NCL P K Sinha for conceiving this idea & organizing the sustainability-based conference.
ICOMS is the annual International Conference organized by NCL in association with IIT(BHU), Varanasi with an objective of industry and academia collaboration for sustainable coal mining and adoption of best practices.
Additional Secretary, GoI MoC M Nagaraju, CMD NCL and MCL P K Sinha, Director Technical Coal India Binay Dayal, Directors and Delegates from Globe were present on the occasion. In all, 102 papers have been selected in ICOMS including participation from 6 countries, 51 Companies are displaying their product and services in the grand Mining and Machinery expo of the event.
NCL ferrying on the path of sustainable mining has dispatched 85.17 MT of coal till date of the Current fiscal with 15.9 per cent growth ensuring energy security of the nation in trying times.
NCL is investing heavily to boost sustainable mining. About Rs 3000 crore is being invested on 9 First Mile Connectivity which leads to enhance the eco-friendly coal evacuation capacity of the company up to 130 Million Tonne till 2023-24 i.e contribution of NCL in 1 BT plan of Coal India Limited. NCL’s two FMC projects have been Commissioned. In the current fiscal 2021-22, NCL is targeting Rs 1640 crore of Capital expenditure and spent Rs 1011 crore with 100 per cent achievement till date.
In an out of box sustainable initiative, NCL is also implementing projects of converting Overburden (OB) to Sand. NCL mines more than 350 million cubic meters of OB each year. The company is also installing rooftop and 50 MW ground-mounted solar power plants and propagating towards net-zero energy companies.
NCL is Singrauli based miniratna company of the Government of India and an arm of Coal India Limited (CIL), operating with its 10 highly mechanized opencast coal mines in Singrauli and Sonbhadra District of MP and UP respectively.
