Displaying items by tag: Power Plant

Australia: Hallett Group plans to establish a slag cement grinding plant in Port Augusta, South Australia. Magnet News has reported the cost of the project as US$83.9m, towards which the producer has received US$13.4m in government funding. The plant will produce cement using South Australian ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) from Nyrstar’s Port Pirie and Liberty Primary Steel’s Whyalla steel refineries and fly ash from the site of the former Port Augusta power plant. Its operations will be 100% renewably powered. An accompanying new distribution facility at Port Adelaide will ship the cement to markets. The project will create 50 new jobs.

When the Port Augusta grinding plant becomes operational in 2023, its products will reduce regional CO₂ emissions by 300,000t/yr, subsequently rising to 1Mt/yr, according to the company’s expansion plans.

Hallett Group chief executive officer Kane Salisbury said "We're talking about 1% of the entire country's 2030 [CO₂ reduction] commitment, delivered through this project." Salisbury added "We're looking at turning South Australia into a global leader in manufacturing green cement."

India: State-owned coal supplier Coal India has recorded a 17% year-on-year decline in deliveries of coal to cement plants in May 2022. Its coal supply to captive power plants also dropped in the month, by 40% year-on-year.

Coal India is the leading coal mining company globally. Its main customers are energy, cement and steel companies.

Pakistan: Lucky Cement plans to install a 34MW solar power plant at its Pezu power plant in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Balochistan Times newspaper has reported that the 48GWh/yr installation will be equipped with a 5.59MWh Reflex energy storage system. Both the power plant and energy system will be the country’s largest when commissioned. Fossil fuel generation will remain online, but be shut down in the daytime, saving 26,600t/yr of CO₂ emissions.

India: RCCPL, a subsidiary of Birla Corporation, has commenced cement despatches from its 2.7M/yr Mukutban cement plant in Maharashtra. The plant has a further grinding capacity of 1.2Mt/yr and a 40MW captive power plant. Switzerland-based ABB previously delivered electrification and automation systems to the site of the new plant in June 2020.

Canada: Lafarge Canada is supplying its ECOPact reduced-CO₂ concrete to contractor PCL for its construction of the upcoming Genesee power plant in Alberta.

Lafarge North America president and general manager Prez Skiba said "The original concrete proposed was already a low carbon design, but we knew we could take it further. We brought in further emissions reductions with our ECOPact design, and we were able to reduce embodied CO₂ by an additional 20%. That's 20% over and above the original design, which already offered a 20% reduction. The combined 36% CO₂ reduction is equivalent to the energy used by 70 houses in a year."

India: Ramco Cements plans to commission a new 2.5Mt/yr clinker production line at its new plant near Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh in February 2022. A 1Mt/yr grinding unit, 12MW waste heat recovery system and 18MW captive power unit at the plant are expected to be commissioned in the 2022 – 2023 financial year, which starts in April 2022.

The cement producer also intends to commission at upgrade to its Nagar cement plant in the 2023 – 2024 financial year. The US$63m project includes installing a new 300t/day kiln at the plant in Tamil Nadu.

India: Birla Corporation has started the kiln at its new 3.9Mt/yr Mukutban cement plant at Nagpur in Maharashtra. The project had an investment of around US$370m and the plant will be run by subsidiary RCCPL. Birla Corporation said that the new plant is the group’s fourth integrated plant and the biggest single cement production line in Maharashtra by capacity. It will be powered by two 20MW captive power plants that use air-cooled condenser technology to reduce water consumption by 90%. The plant was partly built using the group’s MP Birla Cement Perfect Plus product, a Portland Pozzolana Cement, composed of 30 - 35% fly ash, itself a by-product of thermal power plants. Use of fly ash and slag will be scaled up at the site as production ramps up.

“It is no mean feat to complete such a large project under such challenging circumstances with major disruptions on account of Covid-19 which led to several logistical challenges, stoppage of work and a flight of labour from the project site on several occasions,” said Harsh V Lodha, the chair of Birla Group. “Moreover, to achieve 10m man hours of construction with zero accidents and completion of the entire project without a single major accident or fatality, I am told, is a unique achievement in the cement industry.”

Montenegro: State-owned energy supplier Elektroprivreda Crne Gore (EPCG) has proposed the gradual shutdown of its Pljevlja coal-fired plant and its replacement with a new cement plant. The company said that such a plant would eliminate Montenegro’s 750,000 – 800,000t/yr of cement imports.

The first stage of the Pljevlja power plant’s shutdown will only commence once a replacement power facility is online. Currently, the plant supplies 40% of the country’s energy. Its closure is part of Montenegro’s plan to accede to the EU as soon as 2025.

Nigeria: Finland-based Wärtsilä has secured another contract for the supply of a 70MW dual-fuel gas-fired power plant to BUA Cement, this time for the upcoming Line 3 of its Obu cement plant in Edo state. The Sun newspaper has reported that the line and a new fourth line at Sokoto cement plant will bring the company’s total cement capacity to 17Mt/yr when commissioned in 2022. BUA Cement is scheduled to commission the Sokoto cement plant’s new Line 3 in November 2021.

Chair Abdul Samad Rabiu said “Currently, we have phased out the use of coal across our factories and are now shifting to gas-powered plants. As we ramp up our capacity, there is need to complement it with efficient power supply and Wärtsilä’s technology has been found to be durable and uniquely aligned with our vision for more efficient power generation at all our production locations.”

Austria: W&P Zement says that it has commissioned an expanded 18GWh Wietersdorf hydroelectric power plant chain on the River Görtschitz in Carinthia. The chain consists of two new power plants and an existing one which the company optimised during a Euro12m project begun in October 2019. Together, the plants will supply 25% of the producer’s Wietersdorf cement plant’s electricity needs.

Technical director Florian Salzer said “With six modern Francis turbines, 18GWh of green electricity are generated in three power plants along the Görtschitz.” He added “That roughly corresponds to the supply for 3600 four-person households.”