Displaying items by tag: Gas

Mexico: Nearly 500 cement and concrete plants in the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Sonora have partly or fully suspended production due to an on-going regional shortage of natural gas. The El Financiero newspaper reports that plants run by Grupo Cementos Chihuahua (GCC), Cemex, Holcim and Cruz Azul operate in this region.

GCC said that a lack of electricity and natural gas had affected production at three of its plants in Chihuahua, Samalayuca and Juárez. Mexican Association of the Ready-mix Concrete Industry (AMIC) president Ana Laura Burciaga said that the situation has caused a 50% drop in the cement supply to concrete plants.

The cause of the shortage is reported to be the suspension of natural gas exports from Texas, US. Mexican steel and automotive manufacturers have also been affected.

Italy: Cementir Holding recorded revenues from sales and services of Euro1.22bn in 2020, up by 1% year-on-year from Euro1.21bn in 2019. Cement and clinker volumes rose by 13% to 10.7Mt from 9.49Mt. Volumes registered the sharpest increase in Turkey, of 39%. Ready-mixed concrete (RMX) volumes grew by 7.8% to 4.4Mm³ from 4.1Mm³. The company maintained its 2019 earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) levels of Euro264m. It said that an improvement in performance in Turkey, Denmark, Egypt, China and Sweden balanced out negative effects on earnings in Belgium, US and Malaysia.

Chair and chief executive officer Francesco Caltagirone said, “In 2020, despite the serious pandemic, the group showed significant resilience with a 13% increase in cement volumes sold and revenue reaching the historical record. On a recurring basis, EBITDA increased by 2%, EBIT was up by 4% and yearly cash generation was Euro119m."

Under Plan 2021 – 2023 Industrial Plan, the company says that it envisages sales growth of 20% to Euro1.47bn and EBITDA growth of 29% to Euro340bn in 2023 compared to 2020 figures. It said that digitalisation investments begun in 2019 will contribute an expected Euro15m to EBITDA in 2023. As part of its sustainability commitments it has set a CO₂ emissions reduction target of around 30% by 2030, with emissions below 500kg/t of grey cement. However, it said that under the future European Taxonomy criteria white cement emissions are not included.

The group is planning to invest around Euro107m from 2021 to 2023 on sustainability and digitalisation. This includes a the construction of a new calcination plant in Denmark for the production of its Futurecem product and, the installation of wind turbines with an installed capacity of 8.4MW. It is also planning to increase the alternative fuels substitution rate at its integrated Gaurain plant in Belgian to 80% from 40% and invest in the use of natural gas and biogas in some of its plants.

US: CalPortland has launched a new fleet of 24 compressed natural gas (CNG)-fuelled bulk hauler trucks. The company has also commissioned a CNG fuelling hub at its Oro Grande cement plant in California. Ozinga Energy installed the hub, which uses biogenic Redeem methane from organic and agricultural waste at its fast-fill station and 24 slow-fill stations. The producer says that Redeem will reduce CO₂ emissions per tonne of fuel burned by at least 70%. It predicted a total greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 10,000t/yr.

President and chief executive officer (CEO) Allen Hamblen said, “By adding 24 cement bulk hauler trucks and a fuelling centre at our Oro Grande cement plant, CalPortland continues to demonstrate our on-going commitment to achieving zero emissions through environmental stewardship and lowering our carbon footprint within the communities where we operate.”

Pakistan: Lucky Cement has placed an order for three 10MW 34DF dual-fuel engines for its Pezu cement plant in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from Finland-based Wärtsilä. The engines are capable of operating on various fuels but will be fuelled primarily by natural gas. They have been ordered to provide additional power for the unit’s captive power plant due to an increase in cement production capacity. The orders were placed in April, August, and November 2020. No value for the order has been disclosed.

“It is important for large cement producers to have operational flexibility to run the power plant on multiple fuels in case the gas supply is interrupted, or whenever otherwise required. Wärtsilä’s multi-fuel power generating technology provides the kind of flexibility that we need for an efficient and reliable power supply. The cement plant is relying purely on the power plant with Wärtsilä gensets supplying the power,” said Syed Noman Hasan, executive director at Lucky Cement.

In addition to the engines, Wärtsilä is also supplying waste heat recovery boilers needed to generate steam required for the steam turbines for electricity generation in combined cycle mode. The first Wärtsilä engine is being delivered in November 2020 and is expected to become fully operational in January 2021. The remaining two engines will be delivered by March 2021 and will become operational in May 2021.

The cement plant already uses ten Wärtsilä dual-fuel engines in its on-site power plant. The need for the new engines follows on from an increase in cement production capacity.

Tanzania: The Ministry of Industry and Trade said it is working to connect natural gas supplies to the local cement industry to help reduce operation costs and ultimately reduce the cost of cement to consumers. "The government is looking for the best way to ensure that gas is easily available, especially for existing (cement) industries in the Coastal Zone," said Minister for Industry and Trade Innocent Bashungwa.

The minister has also held a joint meeting with Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office (Investment) Angellah Kairuki and nine cement manufacturers, according to the Tanzania Daily News newspaper. The meeting covered issues such as poor roads, energy supplies and taxation.

In 2018 the government set cement prices both locally and for import.

Nigeria: BUA Cement’s revenue grew by 12.7% year-on-year to US$261m in the first half of 2020 from US$232m in the same period of 2019. Its profit after tax rose by 13.7% to US$89.8m from US$78.9m. In comments reported by the Daily Independent newspaper, Yusuf Binji, the managing director of BUA Cement said that, “In a bid to further drive cost efficiencies and sustainability, we entered into strategic alliances for the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) at the Kalambaina, Sokoto State and the management of our mining operations.”

The cement producer has a production capacity of 8Mt/yr. It plans to increase this to 11Mt/yr when it commissions a new 3Mt/yr plant in Sokoto State in 2021.

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

Oman: Cement producers have reacted positively to anti-dumping measures implemented by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The Oman Observer newspaper has reported that the measures, which consist of quality screening, have, since coming into force on 1 March 2020, been ramped up in construction, with a general restriction of the movement of goods due to the coronavirus. Raysut Cement said, “These measures will enable Raysut Cement and our peers Oman Cement to operate at full capacity. We hope that the authorities will continue to strictly enforce this measure in the interest of fair market competition.”

Raysut Cement said that it is ‘Aggressively pushing ahead’ with its US$30m Port of Duqm grinding plant project, which is due for commission in March 2021. “It is a good time for countries like Oman to become self-sufficient in the domestic availability of a strategic commodity like cement,” it said. On 4 May 2020 Raysut Cement announced plans to lobby the government for a gas or electricity subsidy.

Oman’s cement demand is currently 20-25% below pre-lockdown levels.

US: FCT combustion has announced that it has won an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Titan Cement for the upgrade of its 5000t/d kiln line to 100% natural gas firing. The upgrade consists of the installation of two new burners: a dual-fuel capability Gyro-Therm Mk3 and a back-up natural gas-firing Gyro-Therm Mk3. The company has said that it will also supply accessories, field instruments, burner management system (BMS) and valve train.

Bolivia: Antonio Pino, Vice Minister of Hydrocarbons, says that a new gas pipeline will have to be built to supply the Potosí cement plant at Chiutara. This may delay the start of the new plant to as late as early 2022, according to the El Potosí newspaper. The 1.3Mt/yr integrated unit was previously planned to start operation in February 2020.

The project was supported by the country’s previous government administration through the creation of Empresa Publica Productiva Cementos de Bolivia (ECEBOL. The plant is being built by Sociedad Accidental Imasa Polysius, a joint venture created by Polysius and Imasa.