India's first Indigenously Designed High Ash Coal Gasification Based Methanol Production Plant

Methanol is utilized as a motor fuel, to power ship engines, and to generate clean power all over the world.
Methanol is also used to generate di-methyl ether (DME), a liquid fuel that is very similar to diesel
The majority of worldwide methanol production is derived from natural gas, which is a relatively easy process.

Why do we need Coal Gasification based Methanol ?

India doesn’t have much of the natural gas reserves, producing methanol from imported natural gas leads to outflow of foreign exchange and sometimes uneconomical due to excessive prices of natural gas.
India has abundant coal. However, due to the high ash percentage of Indian coal, most internationally accessible technology will not be adequate for our demands.
To address this issue, BHEL R&D centre at Hyderabad began working on Indian high ash coal gasification in 2016 with support from the NITI Aayog.
BHEL successfully demonstrated a facility to create 0.25 TPD Methanol from high ash Indian coal using a 1.2 TPD Fluidized bed gasifier.
The methanol purity of the crude methanol produced is between 98 and 99.5 percent.