Jindal Stainless (JSL) on Wednesday, February 16, announced that it has entered into a pact with the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, to jointly carry out research and development on various projects.

With this partnership, JSL envisions to take up research, new product development, environment safety and skill development along with IIT (ISM), the company said in a statement. IIT (ISM) is a premier institute with major strength in minerals and related efficiencies, and, hence, a natural partner for collaboration.

"We will take up projects that will harness our industrial excellence and the institute's technical prowess," JSL Managing Director Abhyuday Jindal said. This Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is in line with JSL's efforts to promote industry-institute partnerships and opening collaborative avenues between scholars and industry technocrats for mutual benefit.

Both partners will explore research and development opportunities for a plethora of technological frontiers like assessing physiochemical properties and combustion characteristics of coal samples, pelletisation projects, water balancing, soil and geosynthetic studies, among others. JSL has a coal-based power plant and buys coal from all across the globe.

Better expertise in the selection of coal on right parameters, storage and handling of such coal, pulverising and efficient combustion of mixed coal as a recipe has a lot of value creation, which the MoU will help drive. They will also jointly work towards finding effective solutions for various technological and operational challenges faced by JSL.