Energy efficiency has been a major driving force in the country’s cement industry seeking to go green. The effort put together by various companies and technology suppliers has helped bring about significant reduction in specific energy consumption.

Having tasted the fruits of energy efficiency measures and host of case studies highlighting several achievements, sustainable development has become the buzz word in the sector.

KN Rao, Director, Energy and Environment, ACC Limited and Co-Chair of CII Green Cementech 2017 says the cement sector is leading by example. Recently companies converged in Hyderabad to take stock of the progress made and the way forward.

Clearly, the sector is witness to a number of interesting measures aimed at further improving performance — be it in the form of specific heat consumption, setting up of waste recovery systems, use of alternate fuels — all helping to attain the GreenCo rating, where the core focus is on energy efficiency.

While there is an annual award programme that seeks to reward companies for achieving significant savings, waste heat recovery is seen to be an excellent opportunity to substantially reduce the overall operating costs of the industry.

According to studies, there is potential of 800 mw of power generation from waste recovery in plants.

However, while heat recovery projects are picking up pace, the current installed capacity of over 300 mw is spread across 24 plants. These waste recovery systems are expected to play a much bigger role as more of it gets tapped.

The production process in cement sector provides immense flexibility to use all kinds of waste as fuel. Over the years, more than 90 trials have been conducted for different fuels.

In fact, it is estimated that 25 per cent alternative fuel substitution is possible in the Indian cement industry by 2025.

Of this, municipal solid waste and biomass holds the major share on alternative fuels with 57 per cent and 33 per cent respectively. The utilisation of hazardous waste from cement kilns can further reduce environmental impact of incineration or land filling.

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