A new cement plant for steel waste disposal?

Local news sources in India have reported that steel company, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL), is planning to set up a cement plant. While it is not uncommon to hear such news from India, or indeed, for manufacturers to expand their interests into a second industry, the reasoning behind this development is somewhat unique.

Naturally, the primary purpose of any cement plant is cement production, but the foremost consideration RINL’s plan is the disposal of the vast quantities of byproducts that will be generated by the company’s Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, once a current capacity-doubling project is complete. Currently, this plant produces around 3 million tpa steel, but the plans for its expansion extend even beyond the current capacity-doubling work. It is estimated that by 2020, Visakhapatnam steel plant will produce 16 million tpa, steel. The upshot of this is a lot of slag and a lot of flyash, with 800 000 tpa slag being produced by the time steel production reaches 6.3 million tpa.

Though the abundance of these byproducts in India means that they are already widely used as raw materials in cement production, this will be the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that a cement plant has been established specifically with steel industry waste disposal in mind. According to RINL’s plan, which is still in its early stages, the state-owned company would set up a cement unit in Andhra Pradesh at a cost that could be anywhere between Rs.5 – 10 billion, depending on the eventual capacity specifications.

As an alternative, and perhaps more traditional plan, the company is looking into the possibility of establishing long-term supply agreements with existing cement makers to supply the byproducts for their already-established plants.

Written by Jack Davidson.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/asia-pacific-rim/12122012/india_-rashtriya_ispat_nigam_cement_from_steel_byproduct_slag_flyash_786/