Turkey: Sanko Holding is planning start a 7MW waste heat recovery (WHR) unit, supplied by Italy’s CTP Team, at its Cimko Narli Cement plant in early 2019. CTP Team signed a turnkey contract for the WHR unit in March 2018. It will be the first unit in Turkey to use Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technology. The unit will provide approximately 12% of the current plant’s electricity needs, with an annual uptime efficiency of 7920hr and energy of 36kWhr/yr.

“The project will be the first project based on ORC technology with a thermal oil loop in Turkey for heat recovery from the cement industry,” said CTP Team Assistant General Manager Acelya Arik and Sales Director Marco Ernesto Donghi when the contract was signed. They added that since the project is the first ORC-based heat recovery plant in a Turkish cement plant it will be a milestone that will push further WHR projects in this field.

Russia: HeidelbergCement Russia has held an opening ceremony for a new despatch system at its Slantsev ‘Cesla’ plant in the Leningrad region. Mihail Polendakov, General Director of HeidelbergCement in Russia, Anton Hadjiiski, General Director of the plant, Mikhail Moskvin, Deputy Chairman of the Leningrad Region Government for Construction, and Deputy Prime Minister Leningrad Region - Chairman of the Committee for Economic Development and Investment Activities Dmitry Yalov attended the opening.

Following the upgrade the plant now uses an automated loading system for its trucks. The investment for the project was around Euro13m. The unit has a cement production capacity of 0.8Mt/yr.

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.

France: Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies’ pilot plant at Bournezeau, Vendée is set to start commercial production of low-carbon cement products in January 2019. Construction of the 50,000t/yr unit is due to be completed in October 2018 with its inauguration scheduled for late November 2018, according to Batiactu. The plant will employ 10 workers initially and this will rise to 15 – 20 as production ramps up.

The producer intends to make cement products using metakaolin and blast-furnace slag. If the pilot plant is a success it then intends to raise funds to build a 0.5Mt/yr plant.