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Calcined clay projects in Africa
Written by David Perilli, Global Cement
06 April 2022
African cement producers have confirmed their interest in calcined clay over the last month with two new projects. The big one was announced last week when FLSmidth revealed that it had received an order from CBI Ghana. This follows the launch of a Limestone Calcined Clay (LC3) project in Malawi in mid-March 2022 in conjunction with Lafarge Cement Malawi.
FLSmidth says that its order includes the world’s largest gas suspension calciner system and a complete grinding station. The kit will be installed at CBI Ghana’s plant near Accra in the south of the country. The new clay calciner system is expected to substitute 30 - 40% of the clinker in the final product, resulting in a reduction of up to 40% CO2/t of blended cement compared to Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). Overall the equipment manufacturers reckon that the grinding plant will reduce its CO2 emissions by 20% compared to its current output. There has been no indication of how much the order costs but CBI Ghana expects energy and fuel savings, as well as lower overheads from clinker imports.
The public announcement of the Ghana project was also foreshadowed by the visit of Professor Karen Scrivener to the Ghana Standards Authority in February 2022. This was significant because Scrivener is the head of the Laboratory of Construction Materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and has been one of the key instigators of the LC3 initiative since the early 2000s. Other calcined clay cements are available such as Futurecem or polysius activated clay (see below) but LC3 is arguably the most famous given its promotion in developing countries.
The Malawi project is at a much earlier stage. The government launched the public private partnership LC3 project in mid-March 2022 in conjunction with Lafarge Cement Malawi and Terrastone, a brick manufacturer. The Ministry of Mining is currently developing a memorandum of understanding with the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), a Germany-based development agency. India-based Tara Engineering has also been linked to the scheme.
One thing to note about the Malawi project is that it is the first calcined clay project in the cement industry based in East Africa. All the other African ones are based in West Africa. The other two projects in this region are run by Turkey-based Oyak Çimento and its subsidiary Cimpor. The first of these is a 0.3Mt/yr calcined clay and a 2400t/day cement grinding production line that was commissioned in mid-2020. This plant is based at Abidjan in Ivory Coast. The second is a new plant that Germany-based ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions is building for Oyak Çimento at Kribi in Cameroon. This unit has a 720t/day calcined clay and a 2400t/day cement production capacity and it will use the supplier’s ‘polysius activated clay’ technology. ThyssenKrupp’s involvement came to light in early 2020 and commissioning was scheduled for late 2021. However, no update on the state of the project has been issued so far in 2022.
As the above examples show, Sub-Saharan Africa has at least one live calcined clay plant, two plants are being built and there’s one more at the development stage. This puts the region neck-and-neck with Europe, which has a similar mixture of current and developing projects. This column has been covering the wider trend of the growing usage of various types of blended cements recently, particularly in Europe and the US, with slag cements, Portland Limestone Cement (PLC) and more. With PLC, for example, note the transition of another two North American cement plants to PLC this week alone. As for calcined clay cement, it is fascinating to see the focus move to a different part of the world. Several commentators have predicted that the future looks set to be dominated by blended cements using whichever supplementary cementitious material (SCM) is most available for each plant. The growth in calcined clay confirms this view.
Global Cement is researching clay calcination use in the cement industry for the next edition of the Global Cement Directory. Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with any information on new industrial and research installations.
- FLSmidth
- Calcined Clay
- CBI Ghana
- grinding plant
- Plant
- GCW551
- Limestone calcined clay cement
- LC3
- Malawi
- Lafarge Cement Malawi
- Sustainability
- CO2
- Government
- Ghana Standards Authority
- Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
- Terrastone
- Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
- Tara
- OYAK
- Cimpor
- Ivory Coast
- ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions
- ThyssenKrupp
- Cameroon
Julio Rodríguez Izquierdo appointed as chair of Corporación Moctezuma
Written by Global Cement staff
06 April 2022
Mexico: Corporación Moctezuma has appointed Julio Rodríguez Izquierdo as the chair of its board of directors. This follows the resignation of Enrico Buzzi from the post. The change is a planned and periodic rotation of the holder of the role between the company’s two controlling shareholders: Spain-based Cementos Molins and Italy-based Buzzi Unicem. Together, the European cement companies own a 66.7% share of Corporación Moctezuma.
Rodriguez Izquierdo, a 60-year-old Spanish national, is the chief executive officer of Cementos Molins. Prior to becoming the head of Cementos Molins in 2015, he worked for over 30 years at Schneider Electric in a variety of roles before becoming the Executive Vice President Global Operations in 2011.
Irfan Sikander Bawa appointed as chief financial officer of Power Cement
Written by Global Cement staff
06 April 2022
Pakistan: Power Cement has appointed Irfan Sikander Bawa as its chief financial officer. He succeeds Tahir Iqbal.
South Korea: Seven cement producers have agreed to produce 3.77Mt of cement in the second quarter of 2022, up by 36% quarter-on-quarter from first-quarter 2022 levels, to alleviate a shortage. 380,000t of cement which would previously have been exported will now supply the domestic market instead. The Yonhap News Agency has reported that bituminous coal supply issues have hampered the domestic cement industry's ability to increase its production in line with demand growth. In the first quarter of 2022, South Korea's coal imports consisted of 54% Russian coal and 46% Australian coal, compared to 75% Russian and 25% Australian coal in 2021.
The government plans to invest US$764m between 2023 and 2030 in improving the sustainability of South Korean cement production, including moving it away from reliance on coal through increased alternative fuel use.
UAE: Switzerland-based ABB has carried out an upgrade of the control system for UltraTech Cement subsidiary Star Super Cement at the company's Dubai grinding plant. The supplier says that it installed its ABB Ability 800xA distributed control system (DCS) across three grinding units at the facility. The DCS will communicate between the plant and the company's Ras Al Khaimah clinker plant. ABB previously supplied electric and automation engineering services for the Ras Al Khaimah plant in 2012.
ABB Process Industries global cement lead Max Tschurtschenthaler said that Star Cement's operations will benefit from improved operator visibility, easier maintenance and reduced downtime due to the new systems.