Displaying items by tag: Plant
Nirma wins Emami Cement auction
06 February 2020India: Nirma Ltd’s subsidiary cement producer Nuvoco Vistas has announced that it has entered into an agreement with Emami Group for the acquisition of the latter’s 8.3Mt/yr-capacity cement business, including a 2.5Mt/yr integrated plant in Chhattisgarh and three grinding facilities. The company says that with the completion of a capacity expansion to its 4.6Mt/yr Jojobera, Jharkhand, plant in early-2020 it will have a total installed cement capacity of 23.5Mt/yr. Nuvoco Vistas managing director Jay Krishnaswamy said, “This is a momentous development for us, and in line with our long-term ambition to become a leading building materials company delivering superior performance!”
Sagar Cements increases January production by 4.7% year-on-year
06 February 2020India: Sagar Cement’s consolidated production volumes at its integrated 2.4Mt/yr Mattampally, Telangana, and 1.0Mt/yr Tadipatri, Andhra Pradesh, plants in January 2020 were 317,000t, up by 4.7% year-on-year from 303,000t in January 2019. Accord Fintech News has reported that consolidated sales in the period fell by 1.6% year-on-year to 315,000t from 320,000t in January 2019.
On 29 January 2020 the Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change granted environmental clearance to Sagar Cements for and upgrade to all three dry lines of its 2.4Mt/yr Mattampally plant to raise its capacity to 5.0Mt/yr. Its clinker capacity will rise from 2.0Mt/yr to 4.8Mt/yr. The expansion also includes a 36MW coal-fired power plant and a 22MW waste heat recovery (WHR) power plant.
Double commissioning for JK Cement
04 February 2020India: JK Cement has successfully commissioned a 1.0Mt/yr grey cement grinding mill at its integrated Mangrol cement plant in Chittorgarh, Rajasthan and 1.5Mt/yr of new cement grinding capacity at its Aligarh integrated plant in Uttar Pradesh. Both of the units have also commenced commercial dispatches.
Udaipur Cement Works plans 5.0Mt/yr integrated cement plant
03 February 2020India: Udaipur Cement Works has applied for environmental clearance to the government of Rajasthan for the construction of a 5.0Mt/yr integrated cement plant in the state. It plans for the plant to have an additional 2.0Mt/yr grinding capacity, a 30MW waste heat recovery (WHR) power plant and a 25MW coal-fired power plant. Project Today has reported a conjectured value for the project of US$224m.
National Cement breaks ground on upgrade to Ragland plant
31 January 2020US: National Cement has broken ground on its US$250m upgrade to the Ragland plant in Alabama. City, county and state officials attended the ceremony, according to WBRC. The subsidiary of France’s Vicat is building a second kiln at its 1.9Mt/yr plant in Alabama. The project is expected to be completed in 2022.
Dalmia Bharat starts producing oil well cement in Meghalaya
31 January 2020India: Dalmia Cement (Bharat) has started producing oil well cement at its Khelrihat plant in Meghalaya. The subsidiary of Dalmia Bharat says that it is cement manufacturer to obtain a license for manufacturing oil well cement in the north east region of the country from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), according to the Economic Times newspaper. This new unit it intended to serve markets in Assam, Tripura and Mizoram, Myanmar and Bangladesh. Dalmia Bharat has been producing oil well cement at its Dalmiapuram plant in Tamil Nadu since the mid-1980s.
Lucky Cement’s sales fall as energy costs mount
31 January 2020Pakistan: Lucky Cement’s sales and profits have fallen in the first half of its financial year as gas, fuel and transportation costs of input materials have risen. Its sales fell by 11% year-on-year to US$201m in the six months to 31 December 2019 from US$226m in the same period in 2018. Its cement sales volumes dropped by 9.5% to 3.17Mt from 3.50Mt. Its profit after taxation more than halved to US$12.5m from US$35.6m. It also blamed lower sales volumes on price pressure due to low demand and higher transport and logistics costs.
The cement producer started operating a 2.8Mt/yr upgrade to its Pezu plant in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at the end of December 2019. Construction work on a new 1.2Mt/yr plant in Samawah in Iraq is underway, with contracts in place for a cement grinding mill, packing plant and power generation unit. The new plant is expected to start commercial production in late 2020.
Innovation in Industrial Carbon Capture Conference 2020
29 January 2020If you needed a sign that the cement industry has become serious about carbon capture it was the presence of two organisations offering CO2 transport and storage capacity in northern Europe at last week’s Innovation in Industrial Carbon Capture Conference 2020 (IICCC). Both Norway’s Northern Lights and the Rotterdam CCUS (Project Porthos) were busy at their stands during the event’s exhibition. Meanwhile, Cembureau, the European Cement Association, said that it will work on finding other potential storage sites for CO2 and on identifying existing gas pipelines that could be converted. The industry is planning what to do about CO2 transport and storage.
As with the previous IICCC event in 2018 the heart of the programme was the Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) project. Since then Calix’s 60m tall pilot Direct Separation Calciner unit has been built at the HeidelbergCement cement plant in Lixhe and has been tested since mid-2019. Early results look promising, with CO2 separation occurring, calcined material produced and the tube structure and mechanical expansion holding up. Problems with thermocouples failing, blockages and recarbonation at the base of the tube have been encountered but these are being tackled in the de-bottlenecking phase. Testing will continue well into 2020 and plans for the next demonstration project at another cement plant in Europe are already moving ahead. LEILAC 2 will see industry partners Cimpor, Lhoist, Port of Rotterdam and IKN join Calix, HeidelbergCement and other research partners to work together on a larger 0.1Mt/yr CO2 separation pilot scheduled for completion in 2025.
Alongside this HeidelbergCement presented a convincing vision of a carbon neutral future for the cement industry at the IICCC 2020. It may not be what actually happens but the building materials producer has a clear plan across the lifecycle chain of cement. It is researching and testing a variety of methods to capture CO2 process emissions, is looking at supply chains and storage sites for the CO2 and is working on recycling concrete as aggregates and cementations material via recarbonation. In terms of carbon capture technology, an amine-based industrial scale CCS unit looks likely to be built at Norcem’s Brevik plant in the early 2020s. HeidelbergCement’s other joint-research projects – direct separation and oxyfuel – are further behind, at the pilot and pre-pilot stages respectively. Each technology looks set to offer progressively better and cheaper CO2 capture as they come on line.
Or put another way, cement companies in Europe could build industrial scale amine-based carbon (CC) capture plants now. Yet the game appears to be to wait until the cost of CCS falls through new technology versus the rising emissions trading scheme (ETS) price of CO2. CC is expected to become economically feasible in a decade’s time, sometime in the 2030s. At which point there might be an upgrade boom as plants are retrofitted with CC units or new production lines are commissioned. Other ways of reducing the cement industry’s CO2 emissions, of course, are being explored by other companies such as further reducing the clinker factor through the use of calcined clays (LC3 and others), solar reactor or electric-powered kilns and more.
The usual problem of how the construction industry can cope with a higher cost of cement was acknowledged at IICCC 2020 but it is largely being worked around. Higher priced cement poses competitive issues for specifiers and construction companies but it is widely expected to result in price rises below 5% for most residential end users. In the short-term government policy such as requiring low carbon cement in state building projects could stimulate the market. The start of this process can be seen already with the use of slag cements in various infrastructure projects.
Hans Bergman, Head Unit ETS Policy Development at the Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG Clima) partly addressed the cost issue by talking about the EU Green Deal. The EU wants to meet its new targets but it also wants to let gross domestic product (GDP) rise whilst greenhouse emissions fall. The EU ETS is its principle vehicle for this but the commission is wary of changes, such as making modifications linked to CCS, in case it undermines the system. Discussions are ongoing as the work on the Green Deal continues.
IICCC was a wider forum beyond just what LEILAC is up to. To this extent the CC projects involve multiple partners, including those from other cement companies like Cemex and Tarmac (CRH) in LEILAC and Dyckerhoff (Buzzi Unicem), Schwenk Zement and Vicat in the oxyfuel project. The decarbonisation fair included representatives from Vicat’s FastCarb project and Polimi’s Cleanker. Speakers from the European Climate Foundation, Acatech, INEA, TCM, SINTEF and Lhoist were also present.
During one speaker discussion Calix was described as the 'Tesla' of industrial CC by one speaker, who said that, “…there is a genuine competitive opportunity for those bold enough to grasp it.” Calix’s managing director Phil Hodgson enjoyed the accolade but the point was that leading innovation or setting the agenda offers advantages. In the case of industrial CC for the cement industry, change feels a step closer.
0.75Mt/yr National Cement plant opens in Nakuru
29 January 2020Kenya: Devki Group subsidiary National Cement has launched its second Kenyan plant in Salgaa in Nakuru county at a cost of US$58.0m. Business Daily News has reported that the 0.75Mt integrated plant will supply cement to Kenya, South Sudan and southern Ethiopia.
Devki Group chairman Narendra Raval said that the completion of a 0.75Mt/yr second line at National Cement’s 1.2Mt/yr Kajiado County plant would bring the group’s total capacity to 3.5Mt/yr in July 2020, in a speech in which he lobbied the government to ban clinker imports. “We are gearing towards fixing the country’s clinker gap and making Kenya a regional market for raw material in cement production,” said Raval. The group also produces its Simba brand cement in Uganda.
Ciments Calcia’s Couvrot plant to receive Euro30m investment
28 January 2020France: HeidelbergCement subsidiary Ciments Calcia has announced a planned investment of Euro30m of upgrades in early 2021 to its 1.0Mt/yr integrated Couvrot plant in Marne department. L’Union Ardennes newspaper has reported that the upgrades will be ‘process improvements’ to grinding and energy consumption rather than expansions to the plant’s capacity. HeidelbergCement director Didier Faure said the group wants to turn the Couvrot plant into its ‘leading site in Western Europe.’ Faure also called for improvements to safety procedures after three people were injured on site in 2019 – up by 50% from two in 2018.