Regular Update
Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Chemicals and Fertilizers, Dr Mansukh Mandaviya reviewed the progress of works at the FCIL Talcher plant. Talcher plant will be revived with the help of Talcher Fertilizers Limited (TFL), GAIL India Limited, Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers Limited (RCF), Coal India Limited (CIL) and Fertilizers Corporation of India Limited (FCIL).
Dr Mandaviya said the government is pushing its sources to make the country self-reliant. The fertilizer sector is one of them. India is moving towards self-sufficiency in the urea sector by using natural resources like coal using new technologies like coal gasification. From this perspective, the Government of India is reviewing the progress of the Talcher plant, which will be India's largest and first coal gasification urea plant.
TFL has been mandated to revive FCIL's erstwhile Talcher plant with a new coal gasification-based urea plant with an installed capacity of 12.7 lakh metric tonnes per annum. The project is promoting coal gasification and will also help in meeting the target of 100 MT of coal gasification by 2030. This project will boost the economy of Odisha and East India in general, and India will take another step towards self-reliance.
Gasification of coal is strategically important, as coal prices are volatile. Domestic coal is available in abundance. The Talcher plant will reduce dependence on imported natural gas for the production of urea. This will reduce the natural gas import bill. The gasification process adopted at the Talcher plant is more environmentally friendly as compared to the direct coal-fired process.
Revival of closed plants of FCIL and HFCL was the top priority of the government to increase the availability of domestically produced urea. The commissioning of all five FCIL/HFCL plants will increase the country's domestic urea production capacity by 63.5 lakh metric tonnes. Out of the five projects namely Ramagundam, Gorakhpur, Sindri and Barauni, four projects have already started production of urea. The fertilizer manufacturing process at the Talcher project is expected to start by September 2024.
