The alchemy of black gold: inside India’s multi-billion-dollar push to turn coal into cheap industrial gas
“To overcome sanctions that curtailed the availability of crude oil during apartheid, South Africa, which had large coal reserves, embraced coal gasification,” recalled V.R. Sharma, the managing director of Jindal Steel. “They converted coal into syngas and used it to make synthetic natural gas, petrol, diesel and a whole lot of chemicals which they were otherwise importing”.
