Guwahati: Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) has augmented and upgraded its LPG bottling plant to "contribute significantly" towards Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a flagship scheme of the Centre that offers free gas connections to the rural poor.

The NRL on Wednesday said the inauguration of the augmented LPG bottling plant was done by managing director S.K. Barua in the presence of director (technical) B.J. Phukan and other senior officials of the company on Tuesday.

The refinery said with augmentation of its LPG bottling facility from 10,000 tonnes to 42,000 tonnes per annum, it will now be able to contribute significantly towards the flagship scheme launched in May 2016 to provide clean fuel by way of LPG cylinders to BPL households and improve health of women through smokeless kitchens.

Napathar and Gandhigaon near the NRL have already been transformed into "smokeless villages" by the company under its corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme in consonance with the scheme.

The NRL has also modernised its bottling plant. The earlier semi-automatic carousel system has now been replaced by an electronic carousel system which has less manual involvement and is more advanced in meeting accuracy and stringent quality and quantity parameters.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 1,570-1,800 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. The company will be able to bottle around 40,000 tonnes of LPG annually by operating in a single shift and 84,000 tonnes in double shifts," the NRL said, adding that annual LPG production of the refinery now stands at 54,000 tonnes.