Displaying items by tag: Waste Heat Recovery

Manoj Kumar Rustagi was on hand yesterday to discuss JSW Cement’s operations in the UAE at the Virtual Middle Eastern Cement Conference. At the event, jointly organised by Global Cement Magazine and the Arab Union for Cement and Building Materials (AUCBM), Rustagi mainly stuck to the development of the producer’s new integrated plant in the Fujairah Free Zone but he also gave an overview of JSW Cement’s presence in India. For example, as part of an industrial conglomerate, JSW Group, the cement producer benefits from links to steel production by JSW Steel that enables it to use blast furnace slag. Notably, JSW Cement’s Shiva Cement subsidiary announced plans at the end of November 2020 to spend around US$200m on a new 1.4Mt/yr integrated cement plant in Sundergarh district, Odisha with the clinker production line supplied by ThyssenKrupp Industries India.

JSW Cement is not alone in ordering new production capacity. This week, UltraTech Cement approved a planned increase of 12.87Mt/yr for around US$740m. This is in addition to new capacity projects of 6.7Mt/yr that are currently underway. All of these new projects are scheduled to be commissioned in a phased manner by the end of the 2023 Indian financial year (by March 2023). It is unclear at present how exactly these projects are distributed but they are centred in the Northern, Central and Western Zones of the country, and the new tranche includes the previously announced Pali plant in Rajasthan. At this price the inference is that the much of the new capacity will be in the form of grinding plants and/or upgrades to existing clinker lines. Around the same time as this, LafargeHolcim said it wants to spend US$112m on waste heat recovery (WHR) plants for six of its cement plants in India by the end of 2022.

Graph 1: Change in Indian cement production year-on-year (%). Source: Office of the Economic Adviser.

These three projects by major producers suggest that the Indian cement sector is recovering from the effects of the coronavirus lockdown in late March 2020. Graph 1 above shows the sector finally recovering in October 2020, with growth of 3% year-on-year to 26.9Mt. Kumar Mangalam Birla, the chairman of Aditya Birla Group, credited the economic situation with the Indian government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat stimulus program for his decision to commit to UltraTech Cement’s spending spree. This outlook gels with that of Fitch Ratings. The credit ratings agency has forecast in a recent report that ‘strong’ margins during the first half of the 2021 financial year (April – September 2020) are going to limit the financial risks to the larger Indian cement companies despite the lower cement sales volumes due to coronavirus. Pent-up demand helped the industry recover after the lockdown and this was further aided by lower energy/fuel costs and general cost cutting.

Needless to say all of the above is good news for the Indian cement industry after the year it has had. One thought to consider from all of this is who might UltraTech Cement order its mills and clinker lines from? Atmanirbhar, the name of the Indian stimulus plan, has been described as ‘self-reliance’ or ‘self-sufficiency’ in the local press. Unfortunately, relations have been poor between India and China in 2020 due to armed skirmishes along the Line of Actual Control on the border, amongst other issues. Ordering a new clinker production line from, say China-based Sinoma, may not look especially ‘self-sufficient’ in the current climate.

The proceedings pack and video from the Virtual Middle Eastern Cement Conference 2020 is availabe to buy now

India: Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim plans to invest US$112m in implementing waste heat recovery (WHR) plants across six of its cement plants in India by the end of 2022. The group has estimated a net carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions reduction of 0.5Mt/yr as a result of the installations, towards its target of a 65% total reduction between 2018 and 2030.

Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) Magali Anderson said, "On our net zero journey, we set ourselves an ambitious scope-two target. I am very excited to see India leading the way by investing US$112m in WHR. This major step forward builds on our procurement teams’ work in renewable energy."

When commissioned, the new plants will double the group’s WHR power generation capacity in India.

India: Shiva Cement plans to invest around US$200m towards a new integrated cement plant in Sundergarh district, Odisha. The 1.36Mt clinker unit will also include a 1Mt/yr grinding unit, an 8MW waste heat recovery (WHR) unit, 4Mt/yr crushing plants at its dolomite and limestone quarries, a connecting 10km belt conveyor and a dedicated railway siding with a 12km track to the main network.

ThyssenKrupp Industries India will supply a 4000t/day clinker production line for the project. Larsen & Toubro has been awarded the contract for civil, mechanical and refractory erection work. The unit is expected to create around 500 jobs directly and indirectly. Commissioning is scheduled to take place by March 2022.

Parth Jindal, the managing director of JSW Cement said, "The new clinker unit at Shiva Cement in Odisha will provide a strategic advantage to service the needs of our customers in the region and further strengthen JSW Cement's leadership position in the Green Cement category in India.”

The subsidiary of JSW Cement intends to use the new plant as a strategic hub to access markets in the east of the country. It is part of the group’s aim to achieve a production capacity of 25Mt/yr by 2025.

Nigeria: BUA Cement has broken ground at the site of its upcoming 3.0Mt/yr-capacity integrated cement plant in Guyuk, Adamawa State. Governor Ahmadu Fintiri proposed nearby Yola as the site for a second BUA Cement plant in the state, which he said would “further diversify the economy away from sole reliance on petroleum products.”

The company is currently building a 50MW waste heat recovery (WHR) plant in Lamurde, Adamawa State.

Pakistan: Maple Leaf Cement plans to expand the waste heat recovery (WHR) unit to 25MW at its integrated Iskanderabad plant. The project is scheduled for completion in September 2021. It has a projected budget of around US$11m.

Portugal: Secil Group has engaged Italy-based CTP Team to supply and install a 29MW waste heat recovery (WHR) plant at its 2.0Mt/yr Secil-Outão cement plant in Setúbal, Lisboa Region. Dry Cargo International News has reported that the WHR plant will include a 7.2MW Turboden turbine. CTP Team says that, when operational in mid-2022, the plant will cover 30% of the Secil-Outão cement plant’s electricity consumption, reducing its CO₂ emissions by 14,000t/yr.

CTP Team said, “Thanks to the specific advantages of organic cycles and to the total absence of water treatments in the process, the operating expenditure (OPEX) is 75% lower than for an equivalent steam rankine-based WHR cycle.

India: Ramco Cements has commissioned a 9MW waste heat recovery (WHR) power plant at its 3.7Mt/yr Jayanthipuram, Andhra Pradesh cement plant. Chief executive officer (CEO) Av Dharmakrishnan said, “Besides savings in power cost, the installation of WHR systems in our plants will also reduce CO₂ emissions substantially, which will have a positive impact on the environment.”

BusinessLine Online News has reported that Ramco Cements is currently building a 12MW WHR power plant at its upcoming Kolumigundla, Andhra Pradesh cement plant. When the plant becomes operational it, will bring the company’s total WHR power generation capacity to 39MW.

India: Aditya Birla subsidiary UltraTech Cement said that it will spend US$200m in capital expenditure (CAPEX) during the 2021 financial year, which ends on 31 March 2021. The plans consist of a capacity expansion to 118Mt/yr from 115Mt/yr, including the completion of the 4.0Mt/yr Bara grinding plant in Uttar Pradesh and 1.2Mt/yr-worth of brownfield projects in Bihar and West Bengal. Solar and wind power capacity will increase to 350MW from 95MW, while waste heat recovery (WHR) capacity will increase to 185MW from 118MW.

Chair Kumar Birla said, “While 2021 will be a challenging year, Birla remains confident that the economy will revert to the 6 - 8% growth trajectory in 2022.”

India: Mangalam Cement has fully commissioned an 11MW waste heat recovery (WHR) unit at its integrated Morak plant in Rajasthan. About half of the capacity of the unit was previously commissioned in January 2020. Completion of the remaining portion was delayed from early 2020 due to coronavirus.

India: UltraTech Cement has cuts its capital expenditure budget to around US$130m due to the coronavirus pandemic. Work on its 2.2Mt/yr Cuttack grinding unit, which was scheduled for commissioning in March 2021, has been slowed down. Upgrades at its West Bengal and Bihar grinding plants are nearly completed and a waste heat recovery system (WHRS) at its UltraTech Nathdwara Cement subsidiary will be completed in the current financial year.

The leading Indian cement producer said that government directives in response to the health crisis had ‘adversely’ affected revenue. Since ‘select’ activities were allowed to re-open from 20 April 2020 and the company says it is now, ‘dispatching cement from all locations.’ It added that the majority of demand was currently coming from retail markets as some institutional projects restart construction. It operates 22 operational integrated plants, 23 grinding units and 6 bulk terminals. The company said that ‘conserving cash’ is its motto in 2020.