The augmented and upgraded LPG bottling plant of Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), located within the premises of its Marketing Terminal in Numaligarh was inaugurated by NRL’s Managing Director SK Barua on Tuesday.
The inaugural ceremony was also attended by NRL’s Director (Technical) BJ Phukan and other senior officials of the company.
With augmentation of its LPG bottling facility from 10 to 42 TMTPA, NRL would now be able to contribute significantly towards the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana(PMUY), the flagship scheme of the Government of India.
The PMUY was launched to provide clean fuel by way of LPG cylinders to BPL households and improve health of women through smokeless kitchens.
Two neighbouring villages, situated in the vicinity of NRL’s Numaligarh campus, viz. Napathar and Gandhigaon, have already been transformed into ‘smokeless villages’ by the company under its CSR programme in consonance with PMUY.
As per information, under PMUY, which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2016, five crore free LPG connections have been targeted to be distributed across the country to BPL families in three years, out of which over three crore connections have already been distributed.
The scheme was launched in Assam in May 2017 and more than two lakh connections out of planned 30 lakh connections have already been distributed.
The NRL has modernised its LPG Bottling Plant with capacity augmentation from 10 TMTPA to 42 TMTPA.
The earlier semi-automatic carousel system has been replaced now by an electronic carousel system which has less manual involvement and is more advanced in meeting accuracy and stringent quality and quantity parameters.
The new electronic carousel system with 24 filling heads has a design capacity of 1570- 1800 cylinders (of 14.2 kg) per hour as compared to 750 cylinders (of 14.2 kg) per hour in the earlier semi-automatic carousel with 12 filling heads.
Now, NRL will be able to bottle around 42 TMT of LPG annually by operating in a single shift and 84 TMT in double shift.
The annual LPG production of Numaligarh Refinery is 54 TMT.