Displaying items by tag: Power Plant

India: Birla Corporation’s earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose due to increased sales of blended cement in the last quarter of 2018. Blended cements represented 89% of its total sales volumes compared to 85% in the same period in 2017.

The company’s net sales grew by 14.6% to US$653m in the nine months to the end of 2018 from US$569m in the same period in 2017. Its EBITDA rose by 17.1% to US$96.8m from US$82.7m. Its cement production increased by 10.5% to 9.86Mt from 8.92Mt and its cement sales increased by 9.9% to 9.79Mt from 8.92Mt. It said that better sales in key markets had offset raw material price rises such as petcoke, coal and diesel. It noted that the price of diesel had risen by over 20% in the reporting period although it had started to soften in the most recent quarter.

The cement producer held a ground breaking ceremony in late January 2019 for a new plant being built by its RCCPL subsidiary at Yavatmai district in Maharashtra. The 3.9Mt/yr unit has an investment of US$342m and it includes a 40MW captive power plant and a 10.6MW waste heat recovery (WHR) system. Commissioning is scheduled for the 2021 – 2022 financial year. The company is also planning to upgrade RCCPL’s plant at Kundanganj with 1.2Mt/yr of additional production capacity. Other new projects include a 12.25MW WHR system at Maihar that is expected to be commissioned in mid-2019. It is building solar power plants at Maihar, Chanderia and Satna with 11MW, 3.6MW and 1.2MW capacity respectively. Birla Corporation also said that restrictions on using explosives placed on limestone mining at Chanderia in Rajasthan had increased its costs.

Tanzania: The Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) says construction of a new 7Mt/yr cement plant by China’s Sinoma and Hengya Cement is due to start soon. TIC executive director Geoffrey Mwambe said that the government body had provided all the necessary incentives for the US$1bn project, according to the Citizen newspaper. The TIC licence gives investors a three-year window in which to start construction, otherwise the licence revoked.

The Chinese company plans to build a cement plant with a 1200MW captive power plant. At least 70% of the cement produced at the plant will be exported and the remainder will be sold domestically. The unit is expected to create 4000 - 8000 direct and indirect jobs.

Russia: Eurocement is planning a second phase of upgrades for its Kavkazcement plant in 2019. These include starting to generate its own electricity, modernising its cement grinding mills, completing a maintenance campaign and moving to solely operating rotary kilns. The first phase of the upgrade project saw the plant build a slurry pipeline, construct the building for a captive power plant and purchasing monitoring equipment.

Egypt: The Arabian Cement Company is to collaborate with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Qatar National Bank (QNB) to build a solar power plant at its Suez cement plant. The banks are providing funding of over US$5m to support the project, according to the Daily News Egypt newspaper. The solar plant will be built in collaboration with Solarize Egypt. It is scheduled to start operation in the second quarter of 2019.

India: Power stations owned by the Government of Madhya Pradesh are struggling to dispose of fly ash. The power companies were required to dispose of all fly ash in applications such as cement production or construction projects by the end of 2017, according to the Times of India newspaper. However, less than 20% of fly ash has been disposed of from the Shri Singaji Thermal Power Station (SSTPS) and only 20% fly ash has been disposed of at the Satpura Thermal Power Station (STPS).

An employee of a power plant quoted by the newspaper said that the power companies were able to dispose of fly ash where cement plants were nearby but that they found it a ‘great struggle’ elsewhere. A K Nanda, the managing director of the Madhya Pradesh Power Generation Company, said that the STPS had received no interest for an expression of interest since mid-2018. He added that the company was also approaching cement-based industries through social-media channels.

Canada: Lehigh Hanson Materials has signed a deal with SaskPower to give it exclusive rights to fly ash from the coal-fired Shand Power Station near Estevan in Saskatchewan. This expands on an existing 10-year agreement signed in 2012 to market Boundary Dam Power Station fly ash. An estimated 0.22Mt/yr of fly ash will be sold from the Boundary Dam and Shand Power stations.

US: Charah Solutions has launched a proprietary fly ash thermal beneficiation technology that improves the quality of fly ash. It says that its new MP618Multi-Process technology reduces loss on ignition (LOI), ammonia, activated carbon and moisture in fly ash.

The technology allows for the beneficiation of both wet and dry fly ash. It advantages include lower costs, self-contained environmental controls that can be deployed in weeks, as opposed to years and a modular design that can be scaled up or down to increase production based on market demand.

MP618 can process both wet and dry fly ash. It can be installed at both operating and non-operating power plants, regardless of whether the fly ash is current production or legacy ash stored in ponds or landfills. The technology also allows for the processing of kiln dust to remove mercury for emissions regulations compliance. With the introduction of MP618, Charah Solutions expects to increase its supply of marketable fly ash to concrete producers and add greater value to its utility customers.

“MP618 will expand our MultiSource materials network, a unique distribution system of more than 30 nationwide sourcing locations, and improve our ability to provide a continuous and reliable supply of supplementary cementitious materials, including quality fly ash and slag cement, for ready mix concrete producers and other customers throughout the US,” said Scott Ziegler, Vice President of Byproduct Sales at Charah Solutions.

India: Shree Cement has ordered a TRT 5000/8.0 Triplex dryer from Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer. The dryer will be used to dry flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) gypsum from a captive coal-power plant for use in cement plants. In the planned dryer plant the moisture of the FGD gypsum will be reduced to a residual moisture of <2%. Artificial gypsum from the dryer will be used at other cement grinding plants in the country. The 50t/hr dryer will be installed at the end of 2018 and is expected to start commercial operation in mid-2019.

Gebr. Pfeiffer is also planning to partially calcine the gypsum in future installations of the dryer. The TRT Triplex dryer uses the uniflow principle, where both material and hot gasses flow in the same direction and pass through the dryer tubes from the centre outwards. Testing at the Gebr. Pfeiffer test station have yielded ‘positive’ results and further installations in other plants are being considered.

Russia: Eurocement is installing a 24MW captive natural gas power plant at its Kavkazcement plant in Chelyabinsk. The equipment was purchased from Finland’s Wärtsilä for the Euro15.5m project. Construction of the buildings to house the power plant is expected to be completed in November 2018.

The project is a part of an energy efficiency program that Mikhail Skorokhod, the president of Eurocement, signed with Rashid Temrezov, the head of the Karachay-Cherkess Federal Region, as part of the Russian Investment Forum, in 2018.

At present Eurocement has a power generation capacity of 150MW. It has built captive power plants at its Mordovcement, Sengileevskiy, Peterburgcement and Nevyansk cement plants. Upon the completion of the latest program the company is targeting a power capacty of over 400MW.

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement says that an earthquake that took place in early September 2018 in Hokkaido has had a limited effect upon its business. No injuries to employees were reported. Cement production at its Kamiiso plant is continuing using in-house power generation although the unit is working on saving energy. The 6.7 magnitude earthquake has caused widespread disruption on the island, including knocking out local power generation.