Articles on the cement industry from Global Cement

Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a constitutional monarchy located on the Arabian Peninsular. It is sandwiched between Saudi Arabia to its south east, Israel to the west and Syria to the north. It also shares a short border with Iraq to the north east. It covers an area of 89,342km², around half of which is covered by the Arabian Desert.¹ In the west, however, the land is fertile and is used for farming, with some forested areas.

History

Jordan gained its full independence from the United Kingdom on 25 May 1946. In 1955 it became a member of the United Nations and in March 1957 it severed ties with the UK completely when King Hussein prematurely ended the 1948 Anglo-Jordanian Treaty. Popular protests in the capital, Amman, had called for the King to act against the treaty, with many saying that it was an insult to Jordanian independence.²

In the second half of the 20th century, Jordan was involved in two international conflicts, both with its immediate neighbour, Israel. In 1967, Jordan and Egypt went to war with Israel in the Six Day War.³ The confrontation was reignited in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War⁴ in which Jordan acted as part of the Arab League, of which it is a founder member.⁵ In 1994

Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty after a series of protracted discussions that were overseen by US President Bill Clinton.⁶

Recently, Jordan has retained peaceful relationships with all of its immediate neighbours. This is not entirely unrelated to its dependence on other countries for the supply of oil and water, both of which it lacks. Indeed, Jordan is one of the most water-poor nations in the world.⁷

Unlike many of the surrounding nations, Jordan's oil production is very low, producing an average of only 88 barrels a day in 2010.⁸ This places it third from bottom in a list of countries that produced any oil at all in that year.

To coincide with the 7th Global Slag Conference in Helsinki, Global Cement here discusses the trouble with 'slag' as a name. Is it a problem or not? You decide!

What's in a name? Well, quite a lot actually. If you have children (and even if you don't) then you'll know that choosing a child's name is never a trivial decision. It may be easy - for example, tradition or expectation dictating the child is named after a parent or grand-parent. It may be a protracted affair, with the prospective parents scouring reference books for inspiration and drawing up and re-drawing short lists of potential candidates. However, it is never something that should treated lightly.

A child's name is more than a label: it says something about the heritage and values of the parents that named it, which is why we take the responsibility so seriously. Names can communicate family or community traditions, ethnic or religious ties, even social class. Some names can appeal because they are old-fashioned or distinctive, others for precisely the opposite reason.

Aspiring actors and musicians know better than most the value of a good name - and conversely the drawbacks of a poor one. One of the most famous and successful actors in the history of Hollywood,

Archibald Leach, knew that talent and good looks alone were not enough: sounding like a follicly-challenged bloodsucker was not good for business. So he changed his name to Cary Grant.

There is always a potential risk of explosions when handling combustible bulk solids and powders. Process technicians and engineers know how to estimate and minimise this risk. Nevertheless, devastating dust explosions occur too frequently. So-called 'hot-spots,' sudden spontaneous combustion and explosion risks lurk in every stage of the storage, processing and transportation of combustible powders. In the cement industry, this has relevance to coal-grinding systems. Here, Achim Rott from Yara Industrial GmbH explains the different types of inerting systems that can be used to prevent such explosions in the cement industry.

To have an explosion there needs to be oxygen (O₂), a fuel source and an ignition source in the same place at the same time. In the case of coal-grinding or storage (as one might find in a cement plant) it is not possible to remove the fuel (coal) or ignition source (grinding energy, heat, static charges) and so one has to concentrate on removing the third necessary component - O₂.

This fact has given rise to inerting systems that rely on the use of inert gases. Inert gases have a low level of reactivity and reduce oxygen concentration to below critical levels. By doing this, they prevent the occurrence of critical operating conditions and consequently any resulting explosions or fires. Different inert gases are effective to different extents and it is often not absolutely necessary to replace all of the O₂.

Inerting systems are an effective way to satisfy ATEX regulations that cover explosion prevention. In addition the inerting guidelines CEN/TR 15281, VDI 2263-2 and TRBS 2152-2 are used.

Generally, in terms of the European Directive 94/9/EG (Atex 95a) inerting systems are not seen as protection systems and hence are not subject to compliance with the requirements for this directive. An installation not in range of a possible dust explosion zone, in accordance with the European Directive 99/92/EG (Zone 20, 21, 22), is thus strongly recommended.

The largest country in the world,¹ Russia is also in the enviable position of having huge natural resources, including limestone, diamonds, gold, fresh water, minerals and oil.² Indeed, it ranks top in the CIA World Factbook list of oil producing nations³ and has benefitted from recent increases in the price of fuel. Russia is populous and has seen steady economic growth so far in the 21st Century. Its cement industry is also growing rapidly, although it needs significant investment and consolidation to remove older, inefficient plants. Indeed, FLSmidth recently described Russia as its 'most promising' market because of the need for more efficient plants.⁴

Introduction

The Cold War thaws

The ideological battle between Communism and Capitalism known as the Cold War was the defining backdrop to the second half of the 20th Century. On one side was the Soviet Union (USSR) and its allies in the Eastern Bloc; on the other, the USA, Western Europe and others opposed to the spread of Communism. Both sides feared the expansion of the other's ideology and sought to contain the other through a variety of means. These included a mixture of military strategy and posturing, a conventional and nuclear arms race, espionage, the provision of aid to venerable allies, proxy wars in Afghanistan, Korea and Vietnam, diplomatic appeals to neutral countries and technological, military and economic one-upmanship.

Following a series of very conservative leaders in the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. By this time, the Soviets were fighting a losing battle against US-supplied resistance fighters in Afghanistan, which had crystallised existing public opposition to the war there. It was also in a period of economic stagnation and widespread corruption in the government.

With nearly 82 million inhabitants and a GDP of Euro2.5tn in 2010, Germany is both the most populous and richest nation in Europe.^1,2 Although its cement production industry has been muted in recent years due to the global economic downturn, the country has a strong industrial background and is a leader in many industrial sectors, including the manufacture of cement production equipment, which has enabled strong exports to developing regions of the world.

Introduction

East and West

Following defeat of Nazi Germany at the end of the Second World War, Germany was split into two sections in 1949, with the western three quarters (Federal Republic of Germany, FRG) under the initial control of France, Britain and the USA. The north-east corner became the German Democratic Republic (GDR) under the Soviet stewardship of the USSR.

While the FRG (West Germany) was allowed to rebuild its market-based economy and become re-established within Western Europe as part of the US's Marshall Plan, the GDR (East Germany), like other Soviet states, was run to a strict planned economy with centralised production targets and wage structures.