Displaying items by tag: Slag cement

India: JSW Cement has launched its ‘Comp Cem’ product in Goa. It is a blend of clinker, ground granulated blast furnace slag and fly ash, according to the United News Of India. The new product is intended to help the cement producer expand its distribution network in the southern and western parts of the country.

India: JSW Cement plans to increase the production capacity to 3.6Mt/yr at its Salboni grinding plant in West Bengal. The unit has a capacity of 2.4Mt/yr at present, according to the Economic Times newspaper. The cement producer plans to strengthen its presence in eastern India starting with West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand. The plant manufactures Portland Slag Cement and it hopes to tap into local demand for this product with the upgrade.

Sri Lanka: Insee Cement is the first cement company to use the newly diversified Hambantota International Port. Bulk carrier Ithaca Patience docked at Hambantota to discharge 27,150t of slag, according to the EconomyNext. Thusith Gunawarnasuriya, Director of Procurement and Logistics, Insee Cement, the consignee of the slag cargo, said that the company is considering monthly or bi-monthly shipments via Hambantota. Insee Cement has previously used ports at Colombo, Trincomalee and Galle.

India: A report by the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) shows that the local cement sector is on track to meet its 2030 targets from the low carbon technology roadmap (LCTR). Direct CO₂ emission intensity fell by 5% in 2017 in the Indian cement sector compared to the 2010 baseline. CO₂ emission intensity, including onsite or captive power plant (CPP) power generation, was reduced by 6.8% compared to the 2010 baseline. The alternative fuels thermal substitution rate (TSR) increased by 5 times from 2010 to 2017. The sector consumed more than 1.2Mt of alternative fuels in 2017.

“Sustainability is a journey, not a destination. In our globalised and interconnected world, no one can solve alone the challenges ahead of us and the only opportunity to succeed is through collaborative partnerships, where the common interests of all are considered as more important than the sum of individual interests. This is exactly the spirit that has animated the CSI’s low carbon journey since 1999. This flagship project - with its members - has developed, implemented and shared collective solutions for measuring, reporting and improving its greenhouse gas reduction performance, year after year,” said Philippe Fonta, managing director CSI.

The CSI and the International Energy Agency (IEA) worked with nine local CSI member companies - ACC, Ambuja Cements, CRH, Dalmia Cement (Bharat), HeidelbergCement, Orient Cement, Shree Cement, UltraTech and Votorantim Cimentos - to carry out the status review on the sector’s performance trends, continuous implementation measures and notable achievements based on the milestones set in the 2013 LCTR. The Status Review Report was developed in consultation with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), with support from International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Cement Manufacturers Association (CMA).

The findings of the report show that the direct CO₂ emission intensity was reduced by 32kgCO₂/t cement to 588kgCO₂/t cement in 2017 mainly due to an increased use of alternative fuel and blended cement production, coupled with a reduction in clinker replacement factor. However, the study also shows that significant efforts will be needed to meet the 2050 objectives of 40% reduction. The CO₂ emission intensity (including onsite or CPP power generation) has reduced by 49kgCO₂/t cement to 670kgCO₂/t cement in 2017 compared to the baseline year. The report has highlighted the adoption of waste heat recovery (WHR) systems by local cement plants.

The alternative fuels TSR increased to 3% in 2017 from 0.6% in 2010. More than 60 cement plants in India have reported continual usage of alternative fuels, with 24% of the total alternative fuels consumed as biomass. The share of blended cements used in the total quantity of cement manufactured increased to 73% in 2017 from 68% in 2010, largely due to the market’s growing acceptance of blended cement, emerging awareness of sustainability concepts, the availability of fly ash from thermal power plants and the use of advanced technology. The production of Pozzolana Portland Cement grew to 65% in 2017 from 61% in 2010. The share of Portland Slag Cement in cement production remained flat, at less than 10%, over the same period. The clinker factor reduced to 0.71 in 2017 from 0.74 in 2010.

In August 2018 the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) said it was taking over the work previously done by the CSI from 1 January 2019.

India: Jindal Steel & Power (JSP) plans to build a 2Mt/yr slag cement plant at Angul in Odisha. The US$68m unit will use ground granulated blast furnace slag sourced from a nearby steel plant operated by JSP, according to the Business Standard newspaper. A recent expansion at the steel plant to 6Mt/yr has allowed it to support a cement plant of this size. Land for the project has been acquired and the company hopes to obtain it from the state government by early 2019.

India: Dalmia Bharat has launched a fine blend composite cement product called Dalmia FBC. The product is a mix of slag and silica and it is intended to combine the properties of Portland Slag Cement and Portland Pozzolona Cement. The new brand was launched by BK Singh, Senior Executive Director, Group Marketing and Communications, Dalmia Bharat Group and Indrajit Chatterji, Executive Director Sales and Marketing (East) Dalmia Bharat Cement.

There is lots to mull over for the cement industry from last week’s Global Slag Conference that took place in Prague.

One striking map from Michael Connolly, TMS International, showed the status of slag and steel products in the US. It was a multi-coloured patchwork of different regulatory statuses from approval to be used as a product to regulatory exclusion. This won’t come as a surprise to many readers but even within one country the way slag can be used legally varies.

As this column reported last year after the Euroslag Conference, the European Union can be presented in a similar way. The irony here is that increased use of slag and other secondary cementitious materials (SCM) is exactly the kind of change the cement and concrete industries need to make to decrease their carbon emissions. Constant quibbles over whether slag is a product or a waste undermine this. Happily then that Connolly was able to report progress in the US as lobbying by industry and the US National Slag Association have led to more states legally accepting slag as a product.

However, cement producers have other concerns in addition to environmental ones when it comes to slag usage as Doug Haynes from Smithers Apex explained. Haynes, a former UK steel industry worker turned consultant, spoke around a market report on the future of ferrous slag. His take on Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) slag was that despite fuel savings, decreased CO₂ emissions and the benefits of embodied iron when it is used as a raw material for clinker production, it is in the interests of cement producers for slag to be a waste because they then get it for free or at a reduced rate. It’s a similar story to the use of waste-derived fuels powering cement plant kilns where producers want lower fuel costs but waste collectors want value for their product. Unsurprisingly, Haynes wanted cement producers to accept the value embodied in BOF slag.

Charles Zeynel of ZAG International, an SCM trader, then laid out the situation where global SCM supplies are remaining static but cement demand is growing. Coal-fired power station closures are reducing supplies of fly ash, another SCM, placing pressure on existing granulated blast furnace slag (GBS) slag supplies. The message was very much in a slag trader’s favour but instructive nethertheless. If slag is in demand then the price will rise. Anecdotally, the increased number of cement producers at the conference seemed to indicate increased interest of the cement industry in the product.

Lots more speakers followed on topics such as slag beneficiation, grinding advances and new innovations. On grinding, one surprise that popped up was that Spain’s Cemengal has sold a Plug & Grind Vertical mill to CRH Tarmac’s cement plant at Dunbar in Scotland. It is the first such sale of this product in Europe. The last speaker, Jürgen Haunstetter of the German Aerospace Centre, stuck out particularly with his presentation on using slag as a thermal energy storage medium in a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. This may not seem connected to the cement industry but it is along similar lines to Italcementi’s project at the Aït Baha cement plant in Morocco, which uses a CSP process that can be used with the plant’s waste heat recovery unit.

The Global Slag Conference will return in April 2019 in Aachen, Germany.

Read the full review of the 13th Global Slag Conference 2018

France: ArcelorMittal plans to increase its stake in Ecocem France to 49% from 30% by the end of May 2018. The transaction is subject to the approval of the Irish Competition Authority. The French subsidiary of Ireland’s Ecocem was set up in 2007 by ArcelorMittal and Ecocem Materials.

Ecocem produces slag cement from ground granulated blast furnace slag. Ecocem France operates a 0.7Mt/yr grinding plant at Fos-sur-Mer near to an ArcelorMittal plant. It plans to open a second 0.7Mt/yr grinding plant at Dunkirk in May 2018. The new plant is intended to target western and northern France as well as export markets in the UK and Belgium.

Algeria: Work on the construction of low CO₂ cement plant will commence shortly in Bellara, El Milia, according to the local Minister of Environment. The plant, a project by an Algerian-Emirati-Indian partnership, will produce cement using slag and fly ash from the nearby Bellara power station and steel complex, as well as its own clinker. It will have a capacity of 2Mt/yr for the local and export market. It will generate 143 direct jobs when fully operational.

Nepal: Arghakhachi Cement and Jagdamba Cement are planning to build new cement plants. Arghakhachi Cement is spending US$48m on building a new integrated plant, according to the Kathmandu Post newspaper. The new plant will be launched by mid-2018. The company already operates an integrated cement plant at Birpur in Kapilvastu.

Jagdamba Cement is planning to build a 1500t/day cement plant in eastern Bhairahawa. The new unit will create 400 jobs. The cement producer operates two cement-grinding plants at Bhairahawa and Birgunj. The company produces Ordinary Portland Cement, Pozzolana Portland Cement and Pozzolana Slag Cement products.