How much energy do Bikaner plaster of Paris units use, and how much is petcoke?
TERI's Bikaner profile puts the cluster at 20,050 toe a year: petcoke 18,830 toe, about 94%, and 14.2 million kWh of grid power. About 75 of the 150 units run, making some 470,000 t of plaster. That comes to roughly 86,000 t CO2 a year (estimate).
Khara, on India’s gypsum
Rajasthan mines nearly all of India's gypsum, 98.8% of 2.93 million t in 2013-14, and Bikaner has beds up to 30 m thick. Most working units sit in RIICO's Khara estate, about 15 km from the city, many doing job work under other brands. More than 95% of the plaster leaves the state, and 10 to 15% is exported, mainly to Nepal.
Where the heat goes
Gypsum is loaded into a mild steel drum, 3 ft across and 6 ft long, holding 1 or 2 t, and turned at 5 to 10 rpm over a fluidised bed of pulverised petcoke. At 150 to 200 C it gives up three quarters of its water and becomes plaster; about 20 to 25% of the weight leaves as steam. The flue gas leaves at 700 C or more with nothing recovering it, and petcoke runs at 50 to 60 kg per tonne of gypsum.
Petcoke is the footprint
- Heating gypsum releases water, not process CO2, so all the CO2 comes from fuel and power.
- Petcoke: about 77,000 t CO2 a year across the cluster, close to 90% of the total.
- Electricity for crushers, pulverisers and drum drives: about 9,600 t.
- Energy is 24 to 26% of production cost, so the same changes cut the bill.
- We work from toe because the cluster table's petcoke tonnage, 269,000 t, does not square with its own 18,830 toe.
What TERI expects a better furnace to save
- Recover flue heat to preheat combustion air to 250 to 300 C: every 22 C off the flue saves about 1% of fuel, 10 to 15% in all.
- Insulating brick and ceramic fibre in walls, floor and crown, which are now plain red brick.
- Temperature probes at three points on the crown, so firing is not judged by eye.
- A redesigned furnace with all of these: about 20%, some 4,000 toe a year for the cluster.
Bikaner cluster, CO2 a year (estimate)
- Petcoke: 18,830 toe x 41.868 GJ = 788,400 GJ x 97.5 kg = 76,870 t CO2
- Electricity: 14.2 million kWh x 0.675 kg = 9,585 t CO2
- Total: about 86,450 t
- Per tonne of plaster: 86,450 / 470,000 = about 184 kg CO2
Energy and output from TERI's Bikaner plaster of Paris profile (2016). Petcoke at the IPCC 2006 default for petroleum coke; grid factor CEA FY 2025-26.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads your grid bills into Scope 2 at the CEA factor in minutes. It carries no petcoke factor, so the calciner fuel, most of your footprint, needs an outside factor such as the IPCC default used here.
Sources: TERI, Cluster profile: Bikaner plaster of Paris industries (SAMEEEKSHA), IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy, CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, version 22.0
Last reviewed 2026-10-31.