Collaboration Boosts Sustainable Operations for Greener Cement Production

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My first post discussed the significant carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions generated through cement production and the importance of reducing that impact to meet sustainability goals for producers and their customers. While this is a critical global issue, developing nations with rising cement demand face unique challenges.

Our infographic, “Decarbonizing cement manufacturing” looks at the challenges facing today’s cement producers. This post explains how a collaborative partner ecosystem (including energy suppliers, sustainability consultants, and technology and software experts) helps manufacturers reduce costs and CO₂ emissions while increasing revenues and long-term business resilience.

Sustainability road map guiding principles

Collaboration with customers is critical to developing tailor-made decarbonization road maps that consider their unique operational challenges to recommend quick-to-implement solutions that can produce near-immediate benefits. Our recent work on a business case developed with one Indian cement manufacturer illustrates how our solutions can help optimize expenditures, enhance safety, maximize output, reduce downtime, and decrease CO₂ emissions.

Three primary objectives guided our approach:

1. To use consultancy services and software models to design and implement a decarbonization roadmap that offers savings and long-term resilience.
2. To identify, model, and prioritize operational and process decarbonization opportunities along with fuel and total energy reductions.
3. To demonstrate the value of collaboration and the importance of integrated decarbonization solutions tailored to cement manufacturing and other heavy industries.

We identify key priority areas that, when integrated, could reduce their costs, energy use, and emissions within the broader industry with minimal investment. With advanced software and facility simulations, we modeled the value our solutions could provide in the areas of:

1. Carbon mitigation strategy and roadmap
2. Optimized fuel blends and reduce fossil fuel usage
3. Production efficiency by modeling
4. Reduce idle hours for heavy earth-moving machinery (HEMM)
5. Optimizing operating set points by tactical simulation
6. Asset failure prediction by advanced pattern recognition

Realizing real results

The decarbonization strategy was designed through consultation, evaluation, and facility modeling. Its options offer short-term cost and carbon savings with minimal capital investment, including:

• A return on investment in ~8-10 months.
• Carbon emissions reduction by ~7.5%, and overall greenhouse gas reduction of up to 15%.
• Fuel costs reduction by ~2% to ~4%.
• Fuel consumption was lowered by ~2% to ~3%, and coal use was cut by up to ~5%. HEMM fuel consumption also could be reduced by up to ~10%.
• Productivity increases by as much as ~2%.

An additional 24 key areas not included in this initial consultation would offer further cost and carbon savings opportunities, including implanting quality control systems, predictive maintenance, equipment switching strategies, and carbon capture and storage.

Download our infographic to learn more about the benefits of partnership collaboration to develop your facilities’ carbon reduction program.