State-owned BHEL on Wednesday said it has entered into two separate agreements with Coal India and NLC India Ltd to set up coal gasification based plants.

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Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Coal India Limited (CIL), BHEL said it will jointly set up a coal to ammonium nitrate project based on gasification of high ash domestic coal.

As per the agreement with NLC India Limited (NLCIL), a lignite-based gasification pilot plant will be set up for power generation, utilising BHEL's indigenously-developed Pressurised Fluidised Bed Gasification (PFBG) technology.

The MoUs were signed in presence of Minister of Heavy Industries Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of Mines & Coal Pralhad Joshi, NITI Aayog member V.K. Saraswat, BHEL CMD Nalin Shinghal, CIL CMD Pramod Agrawal, NLCIL CMD Rakesh Kumar and other senior officials of the ministries and the three PSUs, BHEL said in a statement.

BHEL's coal gasification technology will not only help in gainful utilisation of India's large coal reserves in a sustainable manner and indigenous production of high-end chemicals, but can also boost power generation through integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology, in line with the Prime Minister Naremdra Modi's vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat.

"75 per cent of Indian coal has high ash content and technologies developed abroad are not capable of handling such coal. BHEL's PFBG technology is most suited for this type of coal. The company has already successfully set up India's first high-ash Indian coal to Methanol (0.25 TPD) pilot plant," BHEL said.