One of India's largest aluminum manufacturers, Hindalco Industries Ltd., a subsidiary of the Aditya Birla Group, has been granted permission by the environment ministry to use petroleum coke as an alternate fuel at its smelter's captive power plant in the eastern state of Odisha, a senior company official said Friday.
The formal letter from the Ministry of Environment was yet to be received, said R.K Gupta, head of the Hirakud Hindalco complex.
Currently, the power plant consumes around 150,000 mt/month of domestic coal and the tentative requirement of petcoke would be around 30,000 mt/month, Gupta said.
The company had not yet decided if it would be using domestic petcoke or imported material, he added.
Since this is the first time that petcoke would be used at the plant, economics like landed cost will decide whether the company will opt for domestic or imported cargoes, he said, pointing out that petcoke prices had gone up significantly in the past few months.
From around $30/mt CFR in February this year, imported petcoke prices have risen to the high $80s/mt CFR level while domestic petcoke prices have doubled from January to current levels of early $90s/mt, sources said.
In June this year, Hindalco had sought permission from the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change to switch to petcoke after the mine from where it was sourcing the coal was deallocated in 2015.
This made the Hirakud operations unviable due to the high cost of the coal being purchased from outside.
In order to check the high costs, the company decided to use petcoke in its CFBC or circulating fluidised bed combustion boilers.
The company intends to fire petcoke up to a 70% mix with limestone dozing to keep within the pollution control norms, the company said.
