Peru: Domestic cement sales were 500,000t in June 2020, down by 59% year-on-year from 984,000t in June 2019. La República newspaper has reported that sales were nonetheless at their highest since the start of the coronavirus lockdown, up by 45% month-on-month from 343,000t in May 2020 and by 4100% from 12,000t in April 2020. Phase two of post-lockdown economic reactivation began in 2020, with the start of works related to public investment and public-private partnerships.

France: UK-based Carbon8 Systems has announced plans for the commercial implementation of its carbon capture and use (CCU) system at Vicat’s Montalieu integrated cement plant in France. It follows successful demonstration projects at cement plants in the UK and Canada.

The company’s CO₂ntainer product will be deployed directly onsite at the plant and integrated into Vicat's existing industrial processes. It will capture CO₂ directly from the plant's flue gas emissions and use this as part of its Accelerated Carbonisation Technology (ACT) process. This accelerates the carbonation of cement bypass dust into lightweight aggregates. In its first phase of operation it will process and convert up to 12,000t of cement bypass dust.

Colombia: Cementos Argos says that 70% of its total cement orders between 1 January 2020 and 9 July 2020 were placed online via its Argos One automated booking, order management and delivery monitoring platform. The platform handled 81% of orders of cement in the Dominican Republic, 39% in the US, 34% in Honduras and 19% in Panama. The company said, “Argos One has become even more relevant in the current context and will continue to evolve in function to continue its purpose of providing extraordinary solutions to clients.”

Mexico: Two workers died after falling in a crane basket from a height of 35m at Cooperativa La Cruz Azul’s integrated Oaxaca cement plant in El Barrio de Soledad Municipality. Noticias Financieras newspaper has reported that the victims died on impact and that the causes are under investigation.

China: Henan Province has announced a planned rise in water and energy tariffs for cement producers that fail to meet current emissions standards and clean transportation requirements. Reuters News has reported that companies subject to the measures will pay US$0.07 – US$0.14/m3 more for water and up to US$0.01/kWh more for electricity. Henan enacted ‘ultra-low’ emissions limits of 10Mg/Nm³ of dust, 50Mg/Nm3 of NO_x and 100Mg/Nm³ of SO₂ in 2018. Cement plants in the province produce 105Mt/yr of cement.

Myanmar: Young Investment Group Industry Company Limited (YIGICL) has entered into a joint venture with China-based China Gezhouba Group Cement (CGGC) and China Gezhouba Group Overseas Investment (CGGOI) with the aim of establishing an integrated cement plant in Mandalay, Mandalay region. The joint venture, which is held 30:70 by YIGICIL and the Chinese partners respectively, will also set up a limestone mine.

India: The Bureau of Indian Standards has granted a licence to Counto Microfine Products (CMP), a joint venture of Ambuja Cements and medical company Alcon Group, for the production of micro-fine Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) cement. The Times of India newspaper has reported that CMP operates a grinding plant in the state of Goa.

Pakistan: Lucky Cement is using its trucks to deliver food to those eligible for disaster relief under the government’s Ehsaas emergency ration scheme. Pakistan Press International has reported that since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis Lucky Cement has made food 8000 deliveries to affected people in rural Khyber Pakthunkhwa and Sindh. The company said, “We are further expanding our muscle to support more deserving families across Pakistan.”

Canada: LafargeHolcim subsidiary Lafarge Canada has dismissed an employee after a thorough investigation into a piece of racist graffiti ended in discovery of the guilty party. Canada Newswire has reported that the harmful drawing, which occurred at the company’s 1.0Mt/yr integrated St Constant plant in Quebec, has been removed. Lafarge Canada said, “To increase employee awareness and strengthen everyone's role in creating a positive work environment, we have communicated with all of our employees on all of our sites and encourage them to speak up if they see, hear or feel any concerns whatever.”

Hydrogen and its use in cement production has been adding a dash of colour to the industry news in recent weeks. Last week, Lafarge Zementwerke, OMV, Verbund and Borealis signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to plan and build a full-scale unit at a cement plant in Austria to capture CO₂ and process it with hydrogen into synthetic fuels, plastics or other chemicals. This week, Air Products and ThyssenKrupp Uhde Chlorine Engineers (TUCE) signed a strategic agreement to work together in ‘key regions’ to develop projects supplying green hydrogen. Both of these developments follow the awarding of UK government funding in February 2020 to support a pilot project into studying a mix of hydrogen and biomass fuels at Hanson Cement’s Ribblesdale integrated plant.

As the title of this column suggests there is an environmental colour code to describe how hydrogen is made for industrial use. This is a bit more codified than when grey cement gets called ‘green’ but it pays to remember what the energy source is. So-called ‘green’ hydrogen is produced by the electrolysis of water using renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric or solar, ‘Grey’ hydrogen is made from steam reforming using fossil fuels and ‘Blue’ hydrogen is similar to grey but has the CO₂ emissions from the fuels captured and stored/utilised. Price is seen as the main obstacle to wider uptake of hydrogen usage as a fuel in industry although this is changing as CO₂ pricing mounts in some jurisdictions and the connected supply chain is developed. A study by BloombergNEF from March 2020 forecasted that green hydrogen prices could become cheaper than natural gas by 2050 in Brazil, China, India, Germany and Scandinavia but it conceded that many barriers would have to be overcome to get there. For example, hydrogen has to be manufactured making it more expensive than fossil fuels without government policy support and its, “lower energy density also makes it more expensive to handle.”

The three recent examples with respect to the cement industry are interesting because they are all exploring different directions. The Lafarge partnership in Austria wants to use hydrogen to aid the utilisation side of its carbon capture at a cement plant. The industrial suppliers, meanwhile, are positioning themselves in the equipment space for the technology required to use hydrogen on industrial plants. Secondly, ThyssenKrupp has alkaline water electrolysis technology that it says it has used at over 600 projects and electrochemical plants worldwide. Air Products works with industrial gas production, storage and handling.

Finally, the Hanson project in the UK will actually look at using hydrogen as a partial replacement for natural gas in the kiln combustion system. A Cembureau position paper in mid-2019 identified that the challenges to explore in using hydrogen in cement production included seeing how its use might affect the physical aspects of the kiln system, the fuel mass flows, temperature profile, heat transfer and the safety considerations for the plant. Later that year a feasibility study by the Mineral Products Association (MPA), Verein Deutscher Zementwerke (VDZ) and Cinar for the UK government department that is funding the Hanson project concluded that a hydrogen flame’s high heat in a burner alone might not make it suitable for clinker formation. However, the study did think that it could be used with biomass to address some of that alternative fuel’s “calorific limitations” at high levels. Hence the demonstration of a mixture of both hydrogen and biomass.

That’s all on hydrogen but, finally, if you didn’t log into yesterday’s Virtual Global CemProducer 2 Conference you missed a treat. One highlight was consultant John Kline’s presentation on using drones to inspect refractory in some hard to reach places. Flying a camera straight into a (cool) pyro-processing line was reminiscent of a science fiction film! Global Cement has encountered the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles in quarry and stockpile surveys previously but this was a step beyond.

The proceedings pack - including video, presenter slides and delegate list - for the Virtual Global CemProducer 2 Conference 2020 is available to buy now