Displaying items by tag: Plant

India: Shree Cement’s board of directors has approved the company’s plans to establish a new US$321m cement plant in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur district.

Shree Cement currently commands an installed capacity of 46.4Mt/yr. In the 2022 financial year, it produced 30Mt of cement, corresponding to a capacity utilisation of 30%.

Russia: Akkermann Cement reportedly plans to invest US$442m in its construction of the upcoming 3.5Mt/yr Kaluga cement plant. The company says that it expects to complete the project in late 2027. State-owned Prime News has reported that, when operational, the plant will generate 400 new jobs in Kaluga Oblast.

Akkermann Cement acquired the site of the upcoming plant in April 2022.

Coolbrook has been in the news recently with collaboration deals struck with Cemex and UltraTech Cement. First the Finland-based company officially launched its Roto Dynamic Heater (RDH) technology with a memorandum of understanding signed with Cemex in May 2022. Then, this week, it signed a similar agreement with UltraTech Cement.

The specifics of either agreement are unknown but the target is clearly to build an industrial pilot of an electric kiln – or something like it - at a cement plant. Coolbrook says it has run a pilot of its RDH technology in Finland. Further tests are now scheduled to continue for two years starting from September 2022 at the Brightlands Chemelot Campus at Geleen in the Netherlands. Commercial scale demonstrations are scheduled from 2022 with the hope of commercial use from 2024. Links with Cemex and UltraTech Cement seem to suggest progress. At the same time Coolbrook will be testing its RotoDynamic Reactor (RDR) technology, which promises to electrify the steam cracking process used in plastic manufacturing.

Publically available details on the RDH technology are light. In its promotional material Coolbrook says that it can achieve process temperatures of up to around 1700°C. This is crucial to achieve full clinker formation in a cement kiln. Reaching this temperature with non-combustion style kilns, such as solar reactors, has previously been a problem. Notably, Synhelion and Cemex said in February 2022 that they had managed to produce clinker using concentrated solar radiation. Retrofit possibilities and compact equipment size are also mentioned in the promotional material for the RDH. The former is an obvious attraction but size of equipment footprint is increasingly emerging as a potential issue for cement plants looking to reduce their CO₂ emissions. Rick Bohan from the Portland Cement Association (PCA) presented a summary of the potential and problems of emerging carbon capture and utilisation/storage (CCUS) technologies for cement plants in the US at the Virtual Global CemCCUS Seminar that took place on 14 June 2022. He noted that installing CCUS equipment makes cement plants start to look different (more like petrochemical plants in the view of Global Cement Weekly) and that they may require more space to install it all.

Coolbrook hasn’t been the only organisation looking at kiln electrification. The installation with the most available information on kiln electrification has been the Decarbonate project, led by the VTT, formerly known as the Technical Research Centre of Finland. The project has built a pilot rotary kiln with a length of 8m inside a shipping container. It has a production capacity of around 25kg/hr. The system reportedly uses fixed radiant heating coils around the kiln, surrounded by insulation materials. Early results presented to the 1st Virtual Global CemPower Seminar in late 2021 were that the kiln started up, sufficient calcination was occurring and the system was operated continuously for three days at a temperature of 1000°C with no problems reported. Further research was scheduled to carry on into 2022 with longer trials planned for three different materials.

HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary in Sweden, Cementa, completed a feasibility study on implementing electrified cement production at its Slite plant in 2019. It then said that it was conducting further study with electricity producer Vattenfall as part of CemZero project. This consists of three projects running to 2025. Namely: heat transfer with plasma in rotary kilns; direct separation of carbon dioxide from calcination of carbonate-based raw materials in the production of cement clinker and burnt lime; and carbon dioxide-free products with electrified production - reactivity of cement clinker with secondary additives. HeidelbergCement has since announced plans to build a full scale 1.8Mt/yr carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant at the Slite cement plant by 2030.

How this would fit with any kiln electrification plans is unknown. However, one attraction of moving to an electrical kiln, for all of the projects above, is to cut out the 40 – 50% of a cement plant’s CO₂ emissions that arise from the fuel that is burnt. Taking a kiln electric also makes CO₂ capture easier. Much of the remainder of the CO₂ released comes from the decomposition of limestone during calcination when clinker is created. Substitute out fossil or alternative fuels and the flue gas becomes much purer CO₂.

It is early days for cement kiln electrification but progress is happening both commercially and scientifically. The next step to watch out for will be the first pilot installation at a cement plant. One point to finish with is a comment that Rick Bohan made at the IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Industry Technical Conference that took place in May 2022: carbon capture is expected to double a cement plant’s energy consumption. Kiln electrification is one potential route for cement production to reach net zero. CCUS is another. If one or both occur then a low carbon future could be a high energy one also.

Watch out for Global Cement’s forthcoming interview with Coolbrook in the September 2022 issue of Global Cement Magazine

For more on CCUS, download the proceedings pack for the Virtual Global CemCCUS Seminar 2022

For more on Synhelion and Cemex read the interview in the December 2020 issue of Global Cement Magazine interview

Tajikistan: Fon-Cement has laid the first stone in the construction of its upcoming Ayni cement plant in Sughd Province. Once operational, the plant will create 120 jobs locally.

Egypt: Misr Cement Qena's board of directors has voted for the company to continue operating its Qena cement plant after the end of a management contract with Arab Swiss Engineering Company (ASEC) on 30 June 2022.

Misr Cement Qena reported an operating incomeUS$5.69m in the first quarter of 2022, up by 59% year-on-year from US$3.58m in the first quarter of 2021. Its net profit in the quarter rose by 74% to US$2.56m from US$1.47m.

Pakistan: Fauji Cement has ordered three MVR vertical roller mills from Germany-based Gebr. Pfeiffer for its upcoming Salar cement plant in Dera Ghazi Khan/Punjab Province. The supplier says that the order consists of a 520t/hr MVR 5600 R-4 mill for grinding raw materials and two 180t/hr MVR 5000 C-4 mills for cement grinding. China-based Hefei Cement will handle the order.

Canada/US: Holcim North America has invested in Blue Planet to support the development and commercialisation of its mineralisation technology. Blue Planet’s process sequesters CO₂ with building waste feedstock such as recycled concrete, cement kiln dust (CKD) and slag to produce new aggregate products. Each tonne of Blue Planet’s aggregate can mineralize up to 440kg of captured CO₂. Lafarge Canada, Holcim US, and Blue Planet will start a multi-year collaboration to help identify potential to use the mineralisation technology to further lower the carbon footprint of the companies’ cement, aggregates and concrete operations, with the potential to expand to other operations in the Holcim Group around the world.

“This is an important step for us in North America. Our vision is to transform our St Constant Plant in Montreal into a carbon campus that ultimately advances commercialisation of mineralisation technologies, including Blue Planet’s products,” said David Redfern, president and chief executive officer, Lafarge Canada. “We look forward to advancing our Net Zero strategy by leveraging mineralization technology that allows us to use the CO₂ from our own cement plants to produce carbon neutral or carbon negative sand and gravel products.”

Germany: Menzel Elektromotoren has launched construction work for its new plant in Hennigsdorfon, on the outskirts of Berlin, with the laying of the foundation stone. More than 200 guests and employees attended the event. The new headquarters will be erected on a 24,000m² plot. All administrative and production workplaces are to be relocated by January 2024.

When complete, the new motor plant with an effective floor space of 8500m² will increase the manufacturer's production capacities, allow the expansion of the workforce and add efficiency gains through an optimised floor plan. The production area of about 3800m² will accommodate the assembly, metal processing, fabrication and winding workshops, paint shops and three test fields. In addition, there will be offices, logistics zones and storage areas. The new property is intended to allow for future expansions.

India: Shree Digvijay Cement plans to more than double the capacity of its Digvijaygram cement plant in Gujarat’s Jamnagar District to 3Mt/yr from 1.2Mt/yr. Projects Today News has reported that the project will begin by mid-2023, and will also include the establishment of a waste heat recovery (WHR) plant.

We return to India to discuss a potential fight that may be brewing in the cement sector. Competition between UltraTech Cement and Adani Group started when the latter won the race to buy Holcim’s cement assets in the country in May 2022. However, the rivalry stepped up a notch this week when UltraTech Cement responded by approving a US$1.7bn investment for expansion.

The leading Indian producer announced that it was committing the funds towards increasing its cement production capacity by 22.6Mt/yr. This will include a mixture of expansions to existing sites and building new plants such as new integrated units, new grinding units and new terminals. UltraTech Cement currently has a previous round of expansion that is set to be completed by the end of the 2023 financial year. Commercial production at the newly announced projects is forecast to start by the end of the 2025 financial year. The company finished off by saying that the upgrade projects would maintain its position as the third largest cement producer outside of China, with its total production capacity rising to 159Mt/yr.

Unusually for these kinds of press releases though, UltraTech Cement made of point of doing the calculation for any readers who might want to know how much this new capacity might cost. It is US$76/t. Adani Group didn’t do this when it said it had agreed to buy Ambuja Cements and ACC from Holcim but, unsurprisingly, it cost more, at least US$94/t based on the cash figure Holcim released for the deal. Note that Adani Group has valued the acquisition at US$10.5bn, which would put the capacity cost up to US$150/t. Other zingers in the press release included Kumar Mangalam Birla’s quote that his company held, “... a deep and nuanced understanding of the market dynamics of the cement industry.” Both of these additions to the statement suggest that UltraTech Cement is making a point about its new competitor.

Bloomberg has framed the actions of UltraTech Cement and Adani Group in the cement sector as a brewing corporate battle between old and new money. Both Kumar Mangalam Birla, chair of Aditya Birla Group - the owner of UltraTech Cement, and Gautam Adani were in the top 10 of the Forbes list of the richest people in India in 2021. Birla comes from inherited wealth, although he has undeniably expanded UltraTech Cement greatly during his tenure as chair. Adani is self-made. Cement is just part of the empires of both men but one risk to UltraTech Cement is just how fast an expansion-driven competitor with concerns in power generation and logistics might decide to try to shake up the cement sector.

It is interesting at this early stage to glimpse part of the potential strategies both cement companies may be employing. Adani Group is in the process of buying its way into the cement sector at a relatively high price for capacity. UltraTech Cement is responding by building new capacity at a lower price. Research by Kotak Institutional Equities cited in the Bloomberg article suggests that Adani Group could increase its 70Mt/yr capacity up to 100Mt/yr at US$80 – 90/t. This would cost up to around US$2.5bn but it’s not impossible. Kotak also reckons UltraTech Cement can eke out around US$3 – 4/t more in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) compared to the existing Ambuja Cements and ACC assets. Adani Group might be able to cut this gap down through creating synergies by further merging the two companies.

This adds to the feeling that UltraTech Cement is in a stronger position as the incumbent market leader. Yet risks abound in the current inflationary conditions and even less is certain if Adani Group is prepared to invest heavily enough. After all, UltraTech Cement had a production capacity of only 23Mt/yr in 2010. Less than a decade later it became India’s largest cement producer. It is now Adani Group’s next move in the battle of the cement billionaires.