ABSTRACT
Pakistan owns about 180 billion tons of coal buried under its surface. However, the share of the coal for power generation is just 2.25%, while oil has 58.5%. This conflicting policy of relying on imported and expensive oil is increasing budget deficit and disturbing the country economy. We studied different energy resources in detail and found that the coal deposits of Thar, approximate reserves of 175 billion tons can be an excellent energy source for the country to meet and fulfill the energy demand.
This research shows detail analyses; chemical processes, reactions, and well linking techniques used for underground coal gasification. This study also demonstrates different operational problems and their solutions mainly water flux and weak strata along the coals seams. At block-V Thar Coal, one gasifier with 36 wells has been successfully completed and a test burn was carried. To link the wells for underground coal gasification, we investigated different techniques such as directional drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and reverse combustion linking. Thus we used reverse combustion linking because of its low cost and effectiveness to link the wells. So the syngas was successfully produced from the coal reserves of Thar by underground coal gasification. This produced low cost syngas after processing can be used for fertilizer industry, gas supply, power generation, diesel production, chemicals manufacturing, and in paint industry.
