Wasted chance

Wasted chance

The cement sector has another big potential -- it can solve our waste-disposal problems. The (the heart of the cement plant) acts as a scavenger, incinerating materials ranging from municipal waste to tyres. It can also use other waste -- flyash from thermal power plants, blast furnace slag from iron and steel plants, phosphogypsum from the fertiliser industry, lime sludge from the pulp and paper sector and mill scale from the iron industry. Globally, the cement industry has been an efficient waste manager -- the Indian cement industry has tried to keep in touch (see graph: Super scavenger). But there is great variation across the industry -- dictated principally by costs incurred due to location and, therefore, transportation. A Lafarge plant uses as much as 47 per cent waste as percentage of cement produced, while Sanghi Cements and Aditya Cements hardly use any.

Flyash and slag, called blending material, have environmental and economical advantages. They reduce the clinker content in cement, which helps conserve energy and limestone and reduces co₂ emissions. The industry has immense potential to address many of the waste problems of the country. In 2003, if all the cement produced in the country was flyash blended (Portland Pozollana Cement), the cement industry could have used 40 per cent of the total flyash generated in the country. However, it managed to use only 12 per cent.

The Indian cement industry increased its consumption of flyash from 5.3 million tonnes in 2000 to 11.6 million tonnes in 2003. While th slag consumption was 4.5 million tonne in 2003, which is one-third of the total slag generated in the country, in total, the industry consumed 16.4 millions tonnes of blending material.

As a blending material, slag is less popular because of transportation problems and the fact that it is officially categorised as a by-product, rather than waste, which means cement manufacturers have to pay for it. But even flyash, which is a waste, comes for a price -- thanks to the vagaries of governmental functioning. Though the government specifies that it has to be provided free, most thermal power plants charge for it. These charges -- labelled administrative costs -- are around Rs 60 per tonne and transportation costs increase the burden. Flyash utilisation can only increase if proper regulations are framed.

While waste is used in some processes, the potential for using it as an energy source is underutilised in India. International cement players use material like animal meal, tyres, solid wastes, liquid wastes, waste oil, for energy, but Indian companies don't. They burn around 34,080 tonnes of waste material as fuel every year, which is 0.05 per cent of the total kiln energy. This is among the lowest globally (see graph: Bottom of the barrel).

Burning waste for energy raises issues concerning toxic and hazardous emissions. Unlike most countries, India has no regulatory framework to govern this. Use of waste such as municipal solid waste as kiln fuel should be encouraged as it could solve a big problem for the country, after setting stringent standards and monitoring mechanism for all possible toxic emissions so that there are no environmental repercussions. 12jav.net12jav.net