Agenda Document for 2021- 22

Table of Contents

Agenda Document for 2021- 22: Relevance

GS 3: Achievements of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.

Recently, Agenda Document for 2021- 22 by Ministry of Coal was released to focus on sustained use of emerging technologies.

It broadly focusses on four areas:
- Coal Sector Reforms
- Coal Transition and Sustainability
- Institution Building
- Futuristic Agenda.
The areas covered step up upon the major reforms done in the last few years and also give direction for covering and meeting the existing and the emerging challenges of the Coal Sector and aligns itself well with the emerging technologies and diversification thrust of the Coal Sector.
The Agenda Document for 2021- 22 covers the entire gamut of areas for steering the Coal Sector into new technologies while focussing on the core competence of ensuring set production targets including the one billion tonne by 2024.
Coal Sector Reforms:
- Projects for the financial year 2021-22,
- Jharia Master Plan,
- Regulatory reforms (Exploration),
- Coal Beneficiation,
- Safety in coal mines,
- Coking coal Strategy,
- Marketing reforms,
- Coal Pricing Reforms,
- Reforms in land acquisition,
- Strategy to boost coal production of mines allocated through auction.
Coal Transition & Sustainability covers the areas of social aspects of coal transition, monetization of de-coaled land, use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in data mining/drones and Sustainability (Net Zero Emissions)
The Futuristic Agenda include Coal to Chemical: Syn Gas, Hydrogen Gas, Liquid fuels, Chemicals and fertilizers.

Coal beneficiation is a process by which the quality of raw coal is improved by either reducing the extraneous matter that gets extracted along with the mined coal or reducing the associated ash or both.

Dry-deshaling: non-coal or shaly-coal is removed without using any liquid media.
Wet process: Coal is crushed to smaller size and put in a liquid media of adjustable specific gravity to separate the lighter coal (low ash) from heavier coal (high ash). The rejects from wet process also contain carbonaceous matter.