Cement News tagged: Environmental
The EPA closes Kiln Line A at Kohat Cement
Kohat Cement has been made to close Line A at its cement factory in Kohat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, having been found to be in violation of the permissible dust emissions by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "The EPA has taken action against Kohat Cement Factory over public complaints about dust pollution," says Director-General Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) KP, Dr Muham...
Arkan Building Materials to co-process SPL
Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) will supply Abu Dhabi-based Arkan Building Materials with waste from its smelting operations. Arkan will co-process EGA’s spent pot lining (SPL) material in its kilns. EGA is building facilities at its Al Taweelah site to process SPL into an alternative raw material or fuel that can be used in cement plants. HE Eng Jamal Salem Al Dhaheri, chairman of Arkan, ...
Hpa-an plants come under public pressure for using coal
Local residents of Hpa-an, Kiyan state, Myanmar, have called on the government to monitor local cement plants that have switched from using natural gas to coal-fired kilns. The two local cement plants in Hpa-an produce 4900tpd and are now 20 years old. Local residents met on 10 November 2018 to urge the authorities to stop the operations of the factories. Environmental impact assessments...
Cemex creates strategic partnership with Energy Vault
Cemex Research Group AG will is creating a strategic partnership with Energy Vault of Switzerland to launch the first gravity-based energy storage system. Energy vault uses a crane to lift 35t concrete blocks with excess electricity, then discharges electricity when demand requires by lowering the blocks to turn turbines. Cemex is working on material applications which include the optimisati...
ACC adopts solar power for Kudithini and Thondebhavi grinding mills
ACC Ltd (LafargeHolcim group) has adopted the use of solar power in the cement manufacturing process at its grinding units in Kudithini and Thondebhavi in Karnataka. The intent is to use about 30MW of solar power at these plants, which will meet over half its annual power requirement – an estimated 45m units of solar power annually. Switching to solar power will reduce CO 2 emissions by 38,0...
LafargeHolcim Paulding harnesses wind power
LafargeHolcim's Paulding plant has become the group's first cement plant in North America to harness wind power. "Distributed wind energy is a first for LafargeHolcim in North America and something we're excited to leverage," said Jamie M Gentoso, CEO of US Cement operations. "The Paulding cement plant has been an anchor of this region for decades, producing high-quality cement and mineral co...
TPI Polene claims waste-fuelled power is unsustainable
TPI Polene has complained about the quality of national waste sorting in Thailand. The company has invested about THB4bn (US$121.9m) in waste-fuelled power plants. But high operational costs, including sorting, make the waste-to-energy business unsustainable, says the Thai cement producer. The lack of sorting means that Thailand's wet and damp waste can only generate about 1200kcal of ener...
Keflavík harbour blocked by grounded cement carrier
The 4000dwt cement carrier Fjordvik has run aground at the entrance to Keflavík harbour in Iceland. The incident happened on Friday 2 November when 14 crew members and pilot were safely lifted off the stricken vessel. The Fjordvik remains lodged on the rocks with a breach in the hull and a small oil spill. The ship had apprximately 100t of oil on board and initial attempts to pump the oil int...
Insee Cement wins environmental awards
Insee Ecocyle Lanka, a subsidiary of Siam City Cement (Lanka) Ltd, scooped the silver award in the solid waste recovery, recycling and disposal or processing category at the Presidential Environmental Awards 2018, held at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH) in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Insee Ecocycle Lanka director Sanjeewa Chulakumara said, "Insee Ecocycle is now establ...
The European Climate Foundation releases CO2 emissions report
There is a significant saving potential of up to 80 per cent of CO 2 emissions in the cement sector by making use of efficiency measures along the whole value chain, without carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. These CO 2 savings could be achieved for a relatively-low financial cost and even with financial savings in some cases. If combining this with CCS, a-close-to carbon-neutral...
CEMBUREAU takes stock of Low Carbon Road map 2050 objectives
C EMBUREAU recently hosted its 'Low Carbon Roadmap Progress towards the 2°C target' in the European Parliament, where it gave an industry update to MEPs. Five years ago the European cement industry published its Low Carbon Roadmap, outlining how CO 2 emissions could be reduced by 32 per cent (compared to 1990 levels) by 2050 with conventional technologies and potentially by 80 per cent if b...
Quarry Life 2018 Award winners announced
A team from the University of South Wales has won HeidelbergCement Group's Quarry Life Awards 2018 for its biodiversity project. The project investigated the value of translocating ancient woodland soils with quarried landscapes at Forest Wood quarry, Mid-Glamorgan, in Wales. The winners picked up a prize of GBP4400 at the ceremony held at Hanson's former sand and gravel quarry at Middl...
Carbon capture bioreactor starts at Fortaleza's Tula plant
Mexico’s Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) has developed a bioreactor which uses microalgae to capture flue gases from cement companies. The reactor was launched at Cementos Fortaleza’s cement plant in Tula in the country’s state of Hidalgo, where it will pilot the technology at plant level. In the process the exhaust gas from the kiln is passed through a reactor that contains water, ...
Northern province of Vietnam will not plan more cement plants
Vietnam’s northern province of Quang Ninh will not add more cement or thermal power plants to provincial planning due to concerns about their negative impacts on the environment, according to Nguyen Van Doc, secretary of the provincial Party Committee and chairman of People's Council. The authority had already removed thermal power projects from planning in the Quang Yen and Dam Ha districts ...
Vassiliko Cement enlisted to dispose of waste tyres
Vassiliko Cement has received 1800t of old tyres from the Dali industrial area of Cyprus in an attempt by the Ministry of Agriculture to safely manage the amount of waste tyres being stored in an environmentally-friendly way. Vassiliko Cement is a licensed management facility for disposal of waste tyres. Following the successful completion of this first phase, the ministry added, the transpor...
Norway's CCS funding from EU receives cautious backing
Norway is attempting to give carbon capture and storage (CCS) a new start with an updated concept focussed on developing transport and storage infrastructure to attract interests from investors around Europe. This includes the transport of CO 2 by boat instead of earlier plans to move CO 2 by pipeline, but the European Commission has been cautious in its response stating that there is curren...