Port of Chennai

Port of Chennai (Tamil: சென்னைத் துறைமுகம்), formerly known as Madras Port, is the second largest port of India, behind the Mumbai Port, and the largest port in the Bay of Bengal.

History
The port is over 125 years old, although maritime trade started way back in 1639 on the lcoal sea shore. It is an artificial and all-weather port with wet docks. It was a major travel port before becoming a major container port. It is a substantial reason for the economic growth of Tamil Nadu, especially for the manufacturing boom in South India, and has contributed in to the development of the city. The port with 3 docks, 24 berths and draft ranging from 12 to 16.5 m (39 to 54.1 ft) has become a hub port for containers, cars and project cargo in the east coast of India. From handling a meagre volume of cargo in the early years, consisting chiefly of imports of oil and motors and the export of groundnuts, granite and ores, the port has moved towards handling 60 million tonnes of cargo in recent years. An ISO 14001:2004 and ISPS-certified port, its container traffic crossed 1 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) for the first time in 2008. The port is currently ranked the 86th largest container port in the world and is expanding in the coming years with the capacity going up to 140 million tonnes per annum.[6][7] Chennai Port has been transformed into a main line port having direct connectivity to 50+ ports.

Port of Chennai and coal
The Port of Chennai handles approximately 8 million tonnes of coal for clients such as the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board, Karnataka Power Corporation, cement plants of Tamil Nadu and independent power producers in northern Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra Pradesh. The coal handling for the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board was transferred to the Ennore Port. In 2005, as part of a pollution-control measure, the port has installed wind curtains made of ultraviolet resistant fabric along the harbour's beachfront for over 1.5 km to the east of the coal terminal to prevent wind carrying coal dust into the city at a cost of 3.7 million.

In 2008, the port has installed a semi-mechanised closed coal conveyor system comprising two streams with a capacity of 15 million metric tons/annum and a handling rated capacity of 1,500 metric tons/hour/stream and running for a length of 5 km at two berths, namely, Jawahar Dock IV and VI, at a cost of 430 million to transfer the coal to the individual coal plots at the southern end of the port, from where the cargo will be transported by rail to respective destinations, thus preventing pollution from coal dust and eliminating movement of coal-carrying trucks within the port. The conveyor runs at an elevation of 10-13 m and has provision for longitudinal movement along the road to the plots and transverse movement for stacking coal at individual plots.

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