Leaching characteristics of coal and fly ash from Parichha Thermal Power Plant, Jhansi, U.P. (India)

Nearly 73% of India's total installed power generation capacity is thermal based power plants, 90% of its coalbased thermal power plants. Coalbased thermal power plants produce approximately 100 million tones of fly ash annually. Indian coal is of poor quality with high ash contents (3550%) and low calorific value (∼ 15 MJ/Kg). This results in higher coal consumption for each MW power. Power generation in India has increased 1362 MW in 1947 to about 1,38,251 MW in March 2009. India is worlds sixth largest energy consumer, accounting for 3.4% of global energy consumption. More than 80 Coalbased thermal power plants is producing 73,492.38 MW (53.15%) while 14,581.71 MW(10.54%) by Gasbased thermal power plants, 1,201.75 MW (0.069%) by Dieselbased thermal power plants, 10,175 MW (7.35%) by Wind power, 34,680.76 MW (25.08%) by Hydroelectric power and 4,120 MW (2.90%) by Nuclear power reactors. The use of coal in power generation has led to increasing environmental problems associated not only with gaseous emissions but also with the disposal of ash residues. In particular, the use of low quality coals with high ash content results in huge quantities of both fly ash and bottom ash to be disposed off. An important problem related to coal ash disposal is the heavy metal content of the residue. In this regard, experimental results of numerous studies indicate that toxic trace metals may leach when coal and fly ash come into contact with water. In this study, coal and fly ash samples obtained from Parichha Thermal Power plant, located about 25 km from Jhansi at Parichha in Jhansi of Uttar Pradesh, and were subjected to toxicity tests, namely, Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) of the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (USEPA). (author)