The Accursed Country of Power Production: What is the Way Out?

Today I was reading an article written by Priyadarshini Sen published recently by the Outlook Magazine as one of its national cover story. The article is titled 'Accursed County' and it deals with the negative side of the thoughtless infrastructural development that has been taking place in India in the past. 

If you have not read this article, I suggest you read it online by clicking the hyper-linked title above.

The author has painstakingly brought out the severe air, water and land pollution that apparently results from the several thermal power plants that have been in operation in and around Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh state.

This district, from techno-commercial angle, is ideal for setting up of thermal power plants. In and around there are coal mines that produce coal suitable for power generation. It has abundant source of water from Sone River and it tributary, the Rihand River and the artificial dam built across the latter creating the Gobind Ballabh Pant Sagar reservoir. More importantly, the district provided vast tracts of inexpensive land for setting up the power plants.

And this techno-commercial viability naturally attracted the public sector and private sector industrial enterprises to set up their thermal power stations in this place. Sonbhadra now produces about 11000 MW of electrical power which is about 10 % of the gross thermal power production capacity of India. It is a very good contribution to power starved India.

Those associated with the power industry and those advocates of fast track development naturally dismiss the environmental adversities as nothing serious. For every good thing, there will be some bad effects as well. They say.

But can it be dismissed that way? Shouldn't we a bit more concerned? Should we not be concerned with the poor populace of the place who are the victims (of pollution)? Shouldn't we concerned with the health problems of the people living here?

This is the issue that the author of the outlook cover story highlights. 

What are the reasons for pollution from thermal power plants? Can we not eliminate it? 

Being a technical person associated with various aspects of thermal power plant design, operation, maintenance and also its complex technicalities of environmental pollution control, I personally feel that the thermal power plant pollution effects can be mitigated to a large extent, provided the people concerned with the thermal power plant industry are a bit more technically and administratively serious with the matter.

First, let us understand the common cause for the pollution problem attributable to thermal power plants. 

Thermal power plants generate electricity by running steam turbines that drive large electric alternators commonly called generators. The steam turbines rotate at high speeds due to the energy transmitted through high pressure steam which is produced in large boilers by burning pulverized coal.

Coal which normally lies hundreds of meters below earth, contains essentially carbon and hydrocarbon compounds. The carbon and carbon compounds gives coal its calorific value or fuel value. Coal also has several mineral compounds within its complex structure which do not have any fuel value. It is generally called the coal ash.

The main constituent of coal ash is silica (silicon dioxide). It also has other mineral oxides and compounds of aluminium, magnesium and also small quantities of minerals containing mercury, phosphorous, etc. Some coal ash may also contain very small quantities of radio active minerals.

The carbon compounds of coal burns and produce heat energy and some gases such as Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, water vapor, hydrogen sulfide, etc. For aiding burning of coal, large quantities of air is required and while burning the oxygen in air is consumed and the rest gases are let out through the chimneys which contains other gaseous products of coal combustion.

The non fuel mineral content of coal does not burn. It comes out as ash particles after coal combustion. Indian coals contain large quantities of ash, as high as 45%. Every one ton of coal burnt produces nearly half a ton of ash.

Large thermal power plants use pulverized coal for efficient burning. Pulverized coal is coal which is finely powdered in coal mills which when carried with air behaves almost like a gaseous fuel.

Thus the ash which comes out of pulverized coal burning in thermal power plants is in the form of fine particles. This ash is commonly called the 'fly ash'. If left out it also gets discharged in to the atmosphere through the chimneys along with the chimney gases. A 100 MW power plant burns nearly 1000 tonnes of coal per hour. If the ash content of coal is 30% that means it has the potential to discharge 300 tonnes of ash dust to the atmosphere every hour! With that kind of a dust discharge, no one could live near a power plant!

Thermal power plants therefore use many air pollution control equipment to control the pollution caused from fly ash that could discharge out from it.  

The best fly ash arresting equipment is the electro-static precipitator or ESP. When designed and operated properly, it can remove fly ash from the chimney gases almost entirely. The fly ash removal efficiency of an ESP could be as high as 99.999%. Nevertheless, this efficiency can drop much when the ESPs are either with inferior design or operated without care or without proper maintenance.

Besides, the ESPs cannot tackle the pollution caused by gaseous pollutants like the oxides of carbon, sulphur, nitrogen etc. 

The fly ash arrested by the ESPs are either collected in dry form and could be used to make pozzolana grade cements. It can also be used to make fly ash bricks. In most power plants, the fly ash is made as a slurry using water and discharged in to a large holding reservoir called the ash pond. Normally, the ash pond is designed to hold the ash produced in a power plant for about 50 years. A filled up ash pond could be a source for raw material for making fly ash bricks. The government of India has recently made it compulsory for all builders and colonizers to use fly ash bricks for reducing the pile up of fly ash in the thermal power plant ash ponds.

Nature has an in built capacity to absorb and degrade all normal pollution caused by human activities. However, when this natural capacity is exceeded, we need to have artificial pollution control systems.

Now let us see what has created the Sonbhadra syndrome. First the ideal techno-economics have caused a concentration of power plants in this area overlooking the natural limits of the region to absorb environmental impacts. While it could have possibly withstood the impact of 2000 MW of thermal power generation, the authorities have allowed it to have 11000 MW thermal power production. This problem is not unique to Sonebhadra. Korba district of Chhattisgarh State which is another power hub of India which may also be an environmentally failed zone if not managed properly!

These areas are burning millions of tonnes of coal an hour. Imagine the oxygen depletion in these districts! Will the green forests of these areas replenish this much oxygen? Perhaps not.

The designers of the power plants ask for various input data such as the average ash content for designing their ESPs. Suppose that they had designed the plants with a maximum ash content of 30% and now the plants are getting coal with average ash content above that limit. Obviously, the power plant chimneys spew the balance fly ash to the atmosphere. Imagine the quantum of hourly tonnes of fly ash getting distributed to the atmosphere through the power plant chimneys in such a situation! In case the power plants do not get operated properly with regard to the air pollution control norms, the ambient air quality of the area deteriorates from what is stipulated as admissible by the central pollution control board. Poor ambient air quality caused by the thermal power plants enhances the level of particulate matter (PM) and respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) in the ambient air. The particulates dispersed to air from power plant chimneys might contain toxic element compounds such a mercury, arsenic, phosphorous, sulphur and the like. When exposed to it for a long term, they could cause serious health hazards to people.

Improper operation and management of the power plants with regard to air, water and land pollution control methodologies adversely affect the environment around the thermal power plants. This happens due to various reasons such as production vs. pollution control priorities of the plant management, inadequate pollution control facilities and incompetence of the plant personnel in understanding pollution causes and its abatement. Of these, the latter plays a very important role.

Thermal power plants generally employ mechanical and electrical engineers for the operation and maintenance of the plants. These engineers are mostly concerned with power production and they are often pressurized to meet the production targets at any cost. The major concern for them is to get the coal, unload it, store it, pulverize it, burn it and run their turbo-generators. These are the operation and maintenance tasks of the mechanical engineers. The electrical engineers of the power station look after the electrical tie lines, the electrical switch gear and the auxiliary equipment electrics. The priorities for all of them are for maintaining the production and the plant load factor. The pollution control equipment operation and maintenance are also entrusted among this group. Pollution control equipment and systems are viewed as those creating obstructions to production and there is always a tendency for the plant personnel to give low priority for maintaining them under the best performance levels.

Thermal power plants also may have a small group of technical people who are entrusted with the water, water treatment, laboratory tests for ensuring equipment performance, quality, etc. They may also be entrusted with the task of pollution monitoring.

In a thermal power station in India, the stress is for production. The power station management personnel are often from the group of engineers associated with mechanical or electrical operations who have been conventionally trained to work hard for achieving high production targets. They are trained to ignore any thing that hampers production or any thing that causes a lowering of production.

Thus air pollution control and other pollution control or quality control aspects become pinching issues for the majority technical personnel and the top management authorities of all thermal power stations in India. With the result that they try to be dominant over all issues concerned with pollution control or quality control. This is a fact of the day.

Indian thermal power stations do not employ trained chemical engineers who have interdisciplinary technical back ground to develop as technical experts who could effectively understand and tackle the intricate technical problems of environment, water, air and the land and its linkages to the various production processes involving fuel and burner management, water management, steam generation, etc.

Some three and a half decades ago, by working in a thermal power plant as a lone chemical engineer I could experience this problem. It was a well thought experimental idea of some visionary management team of those years that could induct me to the thermal power plant. Under normal circumstances, then or now, chemical engineers are hardly inducted in thermal power plants!

In a thermal power power station, if the ESP efficiency is down by 1 % the effect could be catastrophic in the long run. On the other hand, by overlooking the ESP efficiency, the plant operation personnel might be able to enhance the production to some extent. Production and pollution control are two antagonistic agendas in the Indian industry in general.

Awareness programs and punitive initiatives under pollution control perhaps have done some impact. But what is lacking now is the technical knowledge and the expertise to tackle the environmental issues confidently. The environmentalists of India are mostly academicians and theoreticians who make hue and cries outside and not work inside to actually do some real work to eliminate pollution cost effectively! In India, there is hardly any mobility of engineers between Research and Development, academics and the industry. Either sides are maintained too water tight for that to happen.

India has grossly neglected the need for training chemical engineers who are with the basic knowledge to tackle many interdisciplinary technical issues when they are exposed and trained in the real technical fields. This has happened because, the few trained chemical engineers did not find opportunities within India to prove their expertise and develop. The Indian industry recruiters and policy makers unfortunately have little idea about the usefulness of chemical engineers. Many even do not understand the difference between a chemist and a chemical engineer! For example, the thermal power industry of India with all the need for chemical engineers seldom thought about it! In India things go as per conventions and no one hardly think of changing the conventions. Changing the conventions can only be done by progressive societies and progressive people with higher intellectual capacities! India lacks such people in key leadership positions!

Now, as chemical engineering training has become almost non existent in India, it is all the more difficult for getting good chemical engineers for the various interdisciplinary tasks such as that posed by environmental pollution control and utility system engineering.

All these are essentially because of vested interest individuals with inadequate expertise who are in academics and policy planning in India. So long as expertise is something determined by the ability of a person to hoodwink the nominating authorities, this situation is not going to change in this country.

Pollution control laws and enforcement in India have been very lenient. Environmental regulations have also become a tool used by the authorities to exert their control over the industry rather than using it honestly for the benefit of the people. This results in severely polluting industries escaping from any punitive actions while new projects getting unduly delayed for environmental clearances.

It is time that we set aside self interests and move towards greater national interests. When that happens, our country would no longer have accursed counties. It will have only blessed counties! And India would indeed become 'Swachh Bharat' (Clean India) as envisaged by its visionary new PM, Shri Narendra Modi. 

India has no dearth of technical expertise to manage problems of this nature. What it really lacks is the will, honesty and administrative competence of its key functionaries holding key governmental positions!

Let us earnestly hope for positive changes in the near future!

What is Preventing Indians From Shying Away from the Great Opportunities of Corporate Entrepreneurship?

India is a vibrant nation of youths aspiring for getting some job. Unemployment is a serious problem. Millions of youths who graduate from the higher education and professional institutions in the country are finding it difficult for getting some job of their liking in the organized sector. Many are underemployed or are compelled to work in the unorganized sector for a livelihood.

At the same time, India is a land of great opportunities. It geography, population and scope for development give immense opportunities for business. In essence the potentials for entrepreneurs desiring to take up the initiatives are immense.

The problem lies with the Indian educational system. The conventional education system of the country provide little information to the students about the essentials of doing business. Business knowledge and skills have always been a matter of confidential knowledge held by those who either inherited it or tried hard to acquire it under compulsions or by chance.

The hundreds of business schools in India hardly impart any meaningful knowledge to their students in the fundamental aspects of setting up a business entity. While the business schools impart theoretical knowledge in management principles, they never try to go beyond it to equip them in the real practical knowledge that is essential for any business entrepreneur to confidently proceed to make his business ideas work.

Often the educational curricula are made by academicians who have no real experience in business or industry. Industry-business-academic cooperation and interaction in India is a much talked about subject with no one ever trying to do any thing to achieve it practically. Indian academicians clandestinely do all they could to protect their interests always. As is usual with any other profession, they too are too protective about their jobs and would not allow others to enter in to their profession. As a result, there are only few industry experienced persons in the academic councils, senates and syndicates of the Indian universities. As such, the universities and autonomous colleges, including the engineering and management institutions of India fail miserably to absorb the industrial and business experience and knowledge to the their students.

The end result is a large workforce who lack essential knowledge and confidence to undertake challenging jobs and assignments. Excepting a few of the self driven types, the rest miserably lack the skills required for meaningful employment or entrepreneurial qualities for venturing in to the setting up of business ventures of their own.

India may be finding a few young and successful entrepreneurs here and there. But they have mostly got their entrepreneurial skills and abilities by self actuation and abilities and not by the specific grooming they received through their respective educational institutions!

The Indian parents mostly are pessimists with regard to their wards venturing in to any business. Excepting those few business oriented families, most of the common folks discourage their young ones from trying any business of their own. A good majority of middle class parents also consider many kinds of business as some kind of taboos or not befitting for their family status. Many housewives in India are too uncomfortable about the thoughts of any of their family members going ahead with some business ideas. Lack of support and opposition from the family women folk drives away the little enthusiasm that might be with those few with some entrepreneurial ideas!

The Indian middle class are too obsessed with the idea of sending their wards to foreign countries such as the USA, UK, Middle East, Canada, Australia, etc rather than they try their fortunes in their own nation. 

As a result, premier engineering institutes such as the Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) have become mere training grounds for foreign job aspirants! There may be only a few IITians who could successfully streamline their acquired skills and inherent intelligence to establish themselves as first line indigenous entrepreneurs!

All these have happened due to the wholly defective policies of the Indian government that has been in vogue for the past many decades. The Indian governments of the past hardly encouraged first hand business entrepreneurs unless they are some cronies connected to those in power! The Indian bureaucracy too has ensured that the rules and regulations made by them and approved by their political masters so far are solely for ensuring their controls over the business community. 

In such a scenario, no business man could possibly survive in India without bowing their heads before the bureaucrats! The bureaucrats usually get the laws and the regulations drafted and approved by their political supremos giving much leverage for themselves. This necessitates scores of governmental approvals to start any business. Obviously, such approvals do not come forward so easily unless the potential business promoter is willing to spend and bend! At least that is what the common perception in India has come to mature!

Fortunately, the information technology has helped to break many of the bureaucratic and political interference in many kinds of business in India. IT has enabled higher transparency in the governmental procedures to some extent. It is also enabling dissemination of knowledge and breaking the monopoly of formal education system. A positive development indeed!

Successful Indian businessmen, barring a few, are those who have come up under severe constraints facing many problems. Hence they attribute their success to gods and luck rather than their knowledge and hard work. As a matter of fact, many of the existing successful business people do not possess any expert knowledge in the fields of business where they prospered. Their essential knowledge has been in the manipulation of money and people with the help of intelligent but slavish employees!

Many of the Indian businessmen are too scared to reveal their success stories or to encourage young India to venture in to business. Many of them are also too greedy that they would not like a share of their huge profits to be distributed among their employees and clients or even with the nation! They are too apprehensive to be honest due to the prevailing business atmosphere. They know that the country as a whole is not going to honor their contributions. Why should they do things honestly when they are deemed as thieves of the national wealth? There is an immediate need for changing this common belief. There is an urgent need to honor and respect practically honest businessmen and women who create more employment opportunities rather than big market capitalization!

Businessmen who generate thousands of jobs should be honored as national heroes. We can take a lesson from China where Jack Ma has got that preference from the Chinese government because he has been successful in generating millions of jobs! Compare that with the story of Subrata Roy of Sahara in India! 

I earnestly hope that many of our young people would shed their inhibitions and begin exploring the possibilities of becoming job creators rather than job hunters. The formal education system of India may not be in a position to help them for the time being. But the informal internet knowledge base could be easily explored for all necessary guidance for those willing to learn and act.

Business is not about becoming Jack Ma or Dhirubai Ambani overnight. Business is also not to be considered as an option viable only in the urban areas. It is also not a fact that all business start ups need huge investments. In India, there exist good opportunities for small and medium corporate model businesses for the rural areas with low investments. Why can't we think of having corporate offices in the rural areas and tap the talent pool of the rural areas? Why do we need to make a situation that results in the flow of people to the urban areas? Indian metros are already starving for resources and infrastructure. The present flow of population from villages to cities is due to the apparent notion of the people about the job potential of the cities erroneously conceived by wrong policies and feed backs!

In India, the term business brings the image of a petty retailer's face or a well known business tycoon's face in the minds of the ordinary folks. Both do not reflect the true reality. Business and entrepreneurship are something in between the two and have much more potentials than commonly understood!

What are the essential things for doing any business in India?

Young entrepreneurs need to know the basics of the laws that govern the business. They need to know the basic rules of the game. They should also know the great potentials of doing business under the corporate banner rather than doing it as proprietary or as a partnership. They should know the essentials of corporate management and capital raising. Such knowledge would help them to propel their business ideas to get matured and implemented.

Profit alone should not be the motive for business for the young Indian entrepreneurs. They should think of such businesses that would be a useful help to their customers and clients. They should learn to do business without cheating or without breaking the laws. They should device their companies which gives a win-win platform for all the stake holders-to themselves, their share holders, their clients, the government and the general public. They should not allow their companies to be operated under the motives of greed. When this becomes the fundamental guiding principle, there is absolutely no reason that their venture would not succeed! 

How to know the essentials of setting up a business in India?

The following are some links that give much information for those who are desirous of becoming corporate entrepreneurs rather than mere job seekers: 

1. The official business portal of India

2. The online business guidance portal startbizindia

3. Steps for New Company Registration: India

4. How stocks and stock markets work?

5. Indiafilings- Online assistance provider for starting business

Wake up and act. Let us do things in India and prove the might of our nation!

Best wishes to all potential businessmen and women of India! May your efforts bring prosperity!

Pope Francis Has Now Asked the Christians to Enhance their Biblical Concepts of Creation: The Urantia Book is Getting Vindicated!

When I read the news regarding the views expressed by Pope Francis regarding the Biblical story of creation, I felt happy. 

I felt happy because this great religious leader now has honestly opened up to express some of his convictions even though there is an apparent danger of his views offending the hardcore biblical beliefs of a good majority of the common followers of the catholic church that he heads.

But what did he say? He said that evolution is real and God has not created us with his magic wand. He said that the big bang theory and the evolution theory of creation are not essentially contradicting the Biblical story of creation.

And that is exactly what the Urantia Book revealed to us some sixty years ago when it got published for the first time. 

That is what I have been writing after I became a reader and a student of the Urantia Book in the recent years, just as those few millions of intelligent men and women of this world. As the Urantia Book has several celebrity readers and silent followers, there is all possibility that the present Pope too being a reader and student of it all these years!

Many of those readers have been trying to educate their fellow beings about the great truths revealed to human beings by none other than the agencies of God Almighty Himself. But, unfortunately, the majority of humans of the present day though living in an age of scientific discoveries, have not really achieved the mind capacity to receive advanced truths! 

By the way, did you read the news about what the Pope said?

If not, click this link to read it in the Washington Post: "Pope Francis says evolution is real and God is no wizard (magician)"!

These Flowers Are Not Magically Created!

They Are the Outcome of Divine and Human Work!

I have been writing blogs on this aspect in this forum for quite some time. Unfortunately, there are hardly any takers for reasons I just told.

Just a couple of months ago, I wrote an imaginary letter in the name of a group of invisible authors of some of the papers of the Urantia Book based on the revealed knowledge that is contained in this book. [ Read: A Letter to All Humans!] If you haven't read it, try to read it. You would know what the Pope is telling now. 

In case you have the curiosity, try to read the Urantia Book based essays in this blog site. 

The catholic church is now slowly admitting their belief in evolution.  Only a couple of months ago, one of their official sites called the Catholic Answers banned and blocked me for introducing some facts about the Urantia Book. 

But the Urantia Book is not telling Darwin's flawed theory of evolution, but it is telling the true fact of evolutionary development of material worlds and material beings that is termed as the controlled evolution! It was through controlled evolution that the first humans of earth got developed for the first time about a million years ago on this earth. It also explains the constitution of the grand universe comprising of the dark energies and the material domains and the manner in which the fundamental material particle, electron, is composed from the ultra fundamental ultimatons!

However, neither the Catholics nor the scores of the other churches have acknowledged the existence of the Urantia Book officially, even though the book and its contents have been in the public domain for decades. Neither is it got any worthy attention of the present day media. But, such things are not any thing surprising for the readers of the Urantia Book!

I am hopefully sure that this would change in the due course of time. It has to. Because the plans of God for earth cannot be restrained by humans nor any of the invisible and rebellious orders of beings. 

I am happy that the present Pope has already paved the way to initiate a discussion that would eventually bring the revealed truths of the Urantia Book to the attention of more and more of the people of our times which would result in some positive dynamics for changes in human thoughts. They might eventually get adapted to accept absolute truths willingly.

If you have read this with an open mind, you are likely to agree with me.