Displaying items by tag: Emissions
National Cement Company of Alabama’s Ragland cement plant upgrade to reduce CO2 emissions by 40%
25 July 2022US: National Cement Company of Alabama has reported that the new kiln line at its Ragland cement plant will reduce the plant’s CO2 emissions by 40%. Its energy consumption will also fall by 30% as a result of the upgrade. The new line includes a 78m-high homogenisation silo, vertical crusher, five-stage preheater and automated clay storage system. AF used in the kiln will include waste tyres, woodchip and sawdust. The new kiln will help in the Ragland cement plant’s transition to 100% Portland limestone cement (PLC) production by 2023, further diminishing its carbon footprint.
Vicat CEO Guy Sidos said "Our ambition is to use AF in all our cement plants around the world. In addition to eliminating fossil fuel energy and replacing it with recycled regional waste, our investments contribute directly to local development. We are proud of the modernisation and transformation of our Ragland site, which was our very first acquisition outside France in 1974."
Philippines: Cemex subsidiary Solid Cement is installing a new US$356m, 1.5Mt/yr line at its Antipolo cement plant. When operational in April 2024, the line will increase the plant’s capacity by 79% to 3.4Mt/yr. Over the first four months of the project since March 2022, Solid Cement invested US$197m in silos and mechanical installation. The new 1.5Mt/yr line will use Low Temperature Clinker technology to reduce its CO2 emissions, and will also recycle waste hot gases for raw materials drying.
Solid Cement is building the plant using 6000t of its own Vertua reduced-CO2 cement, which it says will further reduce its net carbon footprint by 564t.
Philippines president and CEO Luis Franco said “We will maintain our active role in supporting the development of this nation, as we have done in the past 25 years.”
St Mary’s Cement obtains extension for McInnis cement plant dust emissions compliance order
21 July 2022Canada: The Canadian government’s Environment and Climate Change department has granted an extension to St Mary’s Cement to an order regarding alleged sticky dust emissions from its McInnis cement plant. The Journal de Québec newspaper has reported that the producer now has until 8 August 2022 to submit its observations on the situation. Environment and Climate Change Canada has identified 12 different equipment failures as contributors to the alleged illegal emissions. On 20 July 2022, it had received a total of 80 reports from the public about the situation.
Update on slag cements, July 2022
13 July 2022A trio of slag cement stories have been in the sector news this week with reports from Australia, France and Sri Lanka. Of note from the first two reports is a focus on supplies of slag.
The first concerns Hallett Group’s US$80m supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) project in South Australia. This will see the company process slag and fly ash sourced from sites in the region to manufacture blended cement products and standalone SCMs. These will be principally milled, blended and distributed from a site at Port Augusta. However, an additional distribution site at Port Adelaide is also planned that can both import and export the company’s products in a bid to cut down on supply chain risk, particular for its mining customers. The company says it will replace up to 1.15Mt/yr of cement when fully operational, although initial production looks set to be about a third of this based on local media reports. Commissioning of the Port Adelaide distribution hub is scheduled for May 2023, following by the Whyalla Granulator in January 2024 and the Port Augusta processing plant in June 2024. Pointedly, Hallett Group is explicit about where is plans to source its SCMs from: Nyrstar Port Pirie and, potentially, Liberty GFG.
The second slag-themed story hails from France, where Hoffmann Green Cement has acquired ABC Broyage, which operates a slag grinding plant in North Dordogne. Like the project in Australia above, Hoffmann Green is focused on its supply chain. With this acquisition it will be able to grind its own blast furnace slag instead of buying it. Raw blast furnace slag will be imported via the port of La Rochelle where the company has storage silos. It will then be ground at the former ABC Broyage site and sent on to Hoffmann Green’s H1 and H2 production sites, located at Bournezeau in the Vendée region. Finally it will use it to manufacture its H-UKR and H-IONA cement products. There is no mention of how much the acquisition is costing Hoffman Green. Instead the emphasis, according to company founders Julien Blanchard and David Hoffmann, is very much to, “strengthen our control over our supply and secure our margins in the current highly inflationary context.”
Finally, the week’s third slag-themed cement story is from Sri Lanka, where local media reports that Insee Cement has started producing Portland Composite Cement, using SCMs such as slag, at its Ruhunu grinding plant. This story follows the trend of cement producers around the world switching to greater usage of blended cements, often for sustainability reasons. Unfortunately, political events in Sri Lanka are overshadowing everything else locally, with the president having fled amid social unrest provoked by the ongoing and severe economic crisis. To this end Insee Cement has astutely also donated medical supplies this week to the intensive care unit at the Colombo National Hospital.
These slag stories are important for the cement sector can be demonstrated by a recent update to the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo’s (CICERO) research on global CO2 emissions from cement production. When it published its estimate for 2021 it found that overall emissions were 2.6Bnt in 2021 or just over 7% of the world’s total CO2 output. What is worse though, is that its data suggests that cement-based emissions have steadily grown year-on-year from 1.2Bnt in 2002. Apart from a dip in 2015 they have kept on rising! This can mostly be attributed to the growth of the Chinese cement industry in the early 2000s suggesting that a tipping point may be reached in the current decade as lowering cement production CO2 intensity finally kicks in.
Slag and other SCM-based blended cements fit in here as they are one of the ‘easiest’ ways to reduce the clinker factor of cement and concrete and thereby reduce the sector’s CO2 levels. Hence they keep popping up on the various roadmaps and reports for the cement industry to reach net zero. The flipside of this however is that slag is becoming harder to source as the demand for granulated blast furnace slag increases and less new steel plants get built, especially in North America and Europe. Hence the focus on the supply of slag in the first two news stories above. Blended cements may be the future but getting there will be far from simple.
UK: Holcim subsidiary Aggregate Industries has invested in a new monitoring system from Envirosuite for its Cauldon cement plant in Staffordshire. Called EVS Omnis, the cloud-based environmental management software will collate complex environmental information from surrounding sites outside the plant to facilitate proactive monitoring and management of its impacts. The producer expects to commission the system later in 2022.
Sustainability director Kirstin McCarthy said “Understanding the environment we operate in and the impact we’re having is integral to our business strategy and our commitment to building progress towards a more sustainable construction industry. We know that noise and dust can have an impact on surrounding communities, which is why we’re extremely proud to become the first cement plant in the world to commit to using a complete monitoring solution. EVS Omnis will allow us to continuously monitor at key community locations, 365 days a year. This will help us to not only better understand our operations within the local community but also give us insights into our processes to proactively manage them.”
UK: Karbonite UK has developed a new supplementary cementitious material consisting of mineral feedstock, geopolymers and waste biomass. The process also involves CO2 sequestration and liquid-infused CO2 absorption within the mineral structure. The material, called Karbonite, is activated at 750 – 850°C, releasing water, which is captured for recycling. Its CO2 emissions are 2.7kg/t, according to Karbonite UK. The developer says that Karbonite ground with 50% clinker yields a cement of equal compressive strength to ordinary Portland cement (OPC).
Karbonite UK is currently preparing a final report on the product for a major cement producer.
Managing director Rajeev Sood said “Karbonite offers a wealth of potential to an industry targeting net zero. We are excited to talk to cement and concrete producers about how they could integrate Karbonite technology into their existing process.”
Austria: RHI Magnesita’s customers can now rely on Environmental Indicators on all of its products’ Technical Data Sheets to check their CO2 emissions. The indicators state the CO2 equivalent emissions per tonne of each product. The supplier calculated the figures in line with ISO standards under on-going external supervision.
Chief sustainability officer Gustavo Franco said “One of RHI Magnesita’s main targets is to significantly reduce emissions over the next few decades, with the long-term goal of achieving net-zero operations in all areas of the company. It is clear that a solid basis for sustainable decisions and developments can only be achieved by creating a valid audited database.”
Cement sector CO2 emissions double in 20 years
23 June 2022World: The total volume of CO2 emissions released during cement production have more than doubled over the past 20 years, a study has revealed. In 2021 CO2 emissions from the manufacture of cement came to 2.6Bnt, more than 7% of all emissions, according to Robbie Andrew, a greenhouse gas emissions scientist at the CICERO Center for Climate Research in Norway and the Global Carbon Project. In 2001 the CO2 emissions from cement production were just 1.2Bnt.
Driven by China, the global cement sector’s CO2 emissions have now more than tripled in the 30 years since 1992, recently increasing by 2.6% a year. The drivers are not just that more cement is being made, but that the CO2 intensity of production has risen by 9.2% per tonne, according to the International Energy Agency. This is due to a switch from production in mature markets to developing ones, with China again a dominant factor.
Fauji Cement’s sustainability initiatives slash 215,000t of CO2 emissions in 2022 financial year
20 June 2022Pakistan: Fauji Cement says that its sustainability initiatives across its three cement plants reduced CO2 emissions by 215,000t in the 2022 financial year. The Pakistan Today newspaper has reported that clinker factor reduction in reduced-CO2 products such as Askari Green cement and Pamir cement eliminated 89,900t-worth of emissions, 42% of total reductions. Waste heat recovery (WHR) plants eliminated 79,400t of emissions (37%), solar power plants eliminated 31,500t (15%), alternative fuel (AF) substitution eliminated 8030t (3.5%) and reforestation eliminated 600t (2.5%).
Ciments Calcia to increase rail transport
09 June 2022Belgium/France: Ciments Calcia plans to transition 60% of its truck transport of cement in Belgium and France to rail. The company says that the shift will eliminate 5% of its CO2 emissions. 400 rail cars currently distribute cement from Ciments Calcia’s 10 production sites. The producer said that the planned increase became possible due to logistics solutions developer Everysens’ transport digitisation software.