Global Cement News

Hydrogen and its use in cement production has been adding a dash of colour to the industry news in recent weeks. Last week, Lafarge Zementwerke, OMV, Verbund and Borealis signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to plan and build a full-scale unit at a cement plant in Austria to capture CO₂ and process it with hydrogen into synthetic fuels, plastics or other chemicals. This week, Air Products and ThyssenKrupp Uhde Chlorine Engineers (TUCE) signed a strategic agreement to work together in ‘key regions’ to develop projects supplying green hydrogen. Both of these developments follow the awarding of UK government funding in February 2020 to support a pilot project into studying a mix of hydrogen and biomass fuels at Hanson Cement’s Ribblesdale integrated plant.

As the title of this column suggests there is an environmental colour code to describe how hydrogen is made for industrial use. This is a bit more codified than when grey cement gets called ‘green’ but it pays to remember what the energy source is. So-called ‘green’ hydrogen is produced by the electrolysis of water using renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric or solar, ‘Grey’ hydrogen is made from steam reforming using fossil fuels and ‘Blue’ hydrogen is similar to grey but has the CO₂ emissions from the fuels captured and stored/utilised. Price is seen as the main obstacle to wider uptake of hydrogen usage as a fuel in industry although this is changing as CO₂ pricing mounts in some jurisdictions and the connected supply chain is developed. A study by BloombergNEF from March 2020 forecasted that green hydrogen prices could become cheaper than natural gas by 2050 in Brazil, China, India, Germany and Scandinavia but it conceded that many barriers would have to be overcome to get there. For example, hydrogen has to be manufactured making it more expensive than fossil fuels without government policy support and its, “lower energy density also makes it more expensive to handle.”

The three recent examples with respect to the cement industry are interesting because they are all exploring different directions. The Lafarge partnership in Austria wants to use hydrogen to aid the utilisation side of its carbon capture at a cement plant. The industrial suppliers, meanwhile, are positioning themselves in the equipment space for the technology required to use hydrogen on industrial plants. Secondly, ThyssenKrupp has alkaline water electrolysis technology that it says it has used at over 600 projects and electrochemical plants worldwide. Air Products works with industrial gas production, storage and handling.

Finally, the Hanson project in the UK will actually look at using hydrogen as a partial replacement for natural gas in the kiln combustion system. A Cembureau position paper in mid-2019 identified that the challenges to explore in using hydrogen in cement production included seeing how its use might affect the physical aspects of the kiln system, the fuel mass flows, temperature profile, heat transfer and the safety considerations for the plant. Later that year a feasibility study by the Mineral Products Association (MPA), Verein Deutscher Zementwerke (VDZ) and Cinar for the UK government department that is funding the Hanson project concluded that a hydrogen flame’s high heat in a burner alone might not make it suitable for clinker formation. However, the study did think that it could be used with biomass to address some of that alternative fuel’s “calorific limitations” at high levels. Hence the demonstration of a mixture of both hydrogen and biomass.

That’s all on hydrogen but, finally, if you didn’t log into yesterday’s Virtual Global CemProducer 2 Conference you missed a treat. One highlight was consultant John Kline’s presentation on using drones to inspect refractory in some hard to reach places. Flying a camera straight into a (cool) pyro-processing line was reminiscent of a science fiction film! Global Cement has encountered the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles in quarry and stockpile surveys previously but this was a step beyond.

The proceedings pack - including video, presenter slides and delegate list - for the Virtual Global CemProducer 2 Conference 2020 is available to buy now

India: Sunny Gaur has resigned as the managing director of Jaiprakash Associates due to personal reasons. The conglomerate operates its cement plants in a cluster around Satna in Madhya Pradesh. In 2017 it sold six integrated cement plants and five grinding plants to UltraTech Cement for US$2.5bn in order to reduce its debts.

China: Dongwu Cement has appointed Liu Dong as chairman and Wu Junxian as chief executive officer (CEO) following the resignations of Xie Yingxia and Jin Chungen for personal and retirement reasons respectively.

Liu, aged 51 years, has been an executive director of Dongwu Cement since mid-2019. Since leaving university he worked as a diplomat for the Chinese government and the United Nations. From 2005 he has held a number of senior positions at companies including Orient Holdings Group, Huilitong Industry, Sunshine Oilsands, Orient International Resources Group, Global Mining and Sino-Sindh Resources. He holds over ten years’ experience in capital market and investor relationship sectors in Hong Kong and has a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge.

Wu, aged 39 years, is an executive director of Dongwu Cement and the general manager of Suzhou Dongwu Cement. He joined the group in 2009, and has held various positions in Suzhou Dongwu such as assistant to general manager and deputy general manager. He became general manager of Suzhou Dongwu in 2013. Previously, Wu worked for Orient Holdings and Shanghai Keli Communications Technology. He holds a bachelor degree in management administration from Nanjing Audit University.

China/India: UltraTech Cement has agreed to sell its majority stake in Shandong Binani Rongan Cement for around US$120m. As part of the deal its subsidiaries Krishna Holdings and Nathdwara Cement will both divest their shareholdings in the company. UltraTech Cement picked up the 3Mt/yr plant in 2018 as part of its acquisition of Binani Cement in 2018. The buyer has not been named.

Uzbekistan: Akhangarantsement says that it has installed a ThyssenKrupp raw materials grinding unit at the site of an upcoming 5Mt/yr integrated cement plant in Tashkent Region. The equipment consists of a jaw crusher for primary crushing and a hammer mill for secondary crushing. The company said that the upcoming plant will “provide the market with a line of high-quality products for the construction of housing, industrial and infrastructure facilities.”