Utilization of low grade Indian origin coal: Coal combustion and pyrolysis analysis

In India majority of the coal resources are found to be inferior grade due to the high ash content in them. But, the demand for the power generation and fuel utilization in India is increasing at rapid rate. Still, India depends upon the coal based thermal power plants for the majority (>75%) of electricity generation. To compensate the demand Indian power sectors and other coal derivative sectors are trying to utilize the low rank Indian coals. Coal pyrolysis has been crowned as the twenty first century clean coal technology in conversion of organic matter into high energy products such as syngas and oil along with char as the byproduct. Present book chapter is divided into two parts, in first part the slagging problems related to the utilization of high ash Indian coals in thermal power plants has been analyzed and the remedies to the slagging problems were discussed. In second part, the coal pyrolysis of high ash Indian coal was investigated using TGA analysis. The effect of ash on the pyrolysis of coal has been studied.