The market
By 2013, the global cement market will reach 246 billion raw dollars per year, which represents a total volume of 3.5 billion tonnes of building materials. Cement is the most used building material in the world. China produces around 50 % of world production, while India is the second largest manufacturer, characterized by higher growth - even compared to China. European and American markets slowly recover from a sharp decline in 2008-2009, American sales having dropped by some 17 % in one year. The cement industry is highly concentrated in a few hands. The five largest world producers control more than half of the world's production capacity. Lafarge (France) is the world leader with a turnover of $ 16.1 billion just ahead of Holcim (Switzerland) in 2009. Last year, Lafarge bought 17 cement factories in China, an unprecedented number. Cemex (Mexico), world number three of cement, but number one of building materials, offers rare leadership in Latin America in this world industry. Employment has dropped considerably in the United States in this sector by falling by 23 % in the past 20 years. This is mainly due to the search for economies of scale thanks to the ever -increasing dimension of rotary ovens. FL SMITH, the Danish world leader with more than 1,000 units installed, built the largest flipper oven in China, with a spectacular capacity of 12,000 tonnes of cement per day. One of the main challenges of the cement industry is the emission of greenhouse gas (GHG). Each tonne of portland cement requires 1.3 tonnes of limestone which is heated up to 1450 degrees, freeing CO2 while using 0.2 tonnes of coal and 100 kWh of electricity. In 2010, industry issued around 2.9 billion tonnes of CO2, making it one of the main contributors to climate change and represents 5 % of global GHG emissions. The most climatic cement ovens still produce 0.66 kilogram of CO2 for each kilogram of cement, 90 % of which are rejected at the production point, only 5 % by transport and 5 % by the production of electricity on site.
Innovation
The European Union has subsidized companies that buy outdated cement factories and equip them with own technologies. However, the greenest technologies can only reduce CO2 emissions by 20 %. The chemical reaction that creates this building material simply releases carbon dioxide. Since the quantity of cement produced in the world increases, the total quantity of cement produced in the world also increases the pollution generated. This is called the rebound effect: overall pollution increases while unitary production decreases. The industry has turned to the inclusion of waste which, otherwise, would generate greater environmental challenges, such as the creation of methane (21 times more harmful to climate than CO2) or elimination of the risk of black carbon in the atmosphere burning waste and tires during its production process. On the other hand, one of the main costs of the cement industry is its closure, with very publicized asbestos cases causing almost the bankruptcy of companies, it is instructive to note that during the 1950s and 60s. Asbestos was a standard material used by the cement industry. When Anders Byström observed the mechanical wonders of a rotary oven which treated cement for decades at high temperature, he could not help being impressed. He admired this heavy equipment that rusted at Stora Vika, in an old cement plant just south of Stockholm. How could such a masterpiece of engineering be valued only for its breakage value? The cement factories are faced with high closing costs, but for Anders, the installations could be converted to the solid municipal waste treatment plant (SMW). Instead of burning coal and treating limestone, he imagined how the entire installation could receive solid waste, first eliminating all metals, then keeping up to 900 tonnes at the rate of 300 Tons per day, subjecting the mixture of organic and inorganic materials to a combined aerobic and anaerobic digestion. All waste could be sorted and recycled, and the rest being a clean compost.
The first cash flow
The innovative process, from the retraining of the waste sorting factory, has gone from a one -tonne pilot unit per day to a full -fledged farm. However, he drew the attention of Masatsugu Taniguchi, a senior executive in Taiheiyo Cement, the largest group of Japanese cement. He realized that this could represent a breakthrough for an infrastructure which faces a decrease in the demand for cement, while at the same time there is an increase in demand for waste management. On the basis of pilot studies carried out in Sweden with Japanese waste, the engineers of Taiheiyo Cement concluded that the total calorific power of SMW water could reach a surprising 50 % of that of coal, the traditional fuel inside the interior Fours, if treated in these former rotating ovens. An investment of $ 40 million allowed the creation in Hidaka City, in the prefecture of Saitama, Japan, the first installation on an industrial scale. An abandoned oven receives all the OMRs from the local waste management company. This allowed the City to rebuild an investment pending in an incineration installation, nor to seek to enlarge its landfill site. This has reduced the tax burden for local citizens, while improving air quality. Swedish technology has transformed low calorific power waste into high calorific power waste, while eliminating the risk of methane production from discharges, a harmful greenhouse gas. This process saved 20 tonnes of coal per day, thus helping to reduce the negative impact generated by a traditional waste management system at lower cost, thanks to the use of available materials. This approach considers industry as an interconnected system, a key characteristic of the blue economy. After two years of testing, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) proposed an operating license.
The opportunity
One of the underused capital structures in the world is the damping of manufacturing facilities. Given that these installations are often evaluated by almost nothing in the record, since they have been fully amortized, they always run the risk of high costs of closing and dismantling, as companies are prohibited from selling these old installations at a price symbolic, as was the case before. If the cement makers stick to the core of cement, this will remain a risk. On the other hand, if the cement makers are ready to think outside the box and create a consortium with additional partners, they could reduce their own responsibilities, reduce their negative impact on the climate, create jobs, improve the return on investment and even lighten The tax burden linked to costly waste management. Using what you have, reducing public deficits, while meeting basic energy needs, represents a basis for business development. Entrepreneurs like Anders Byström have shown that this activity can take off with very limited private financial resources. As investments in cement industries will continue to cushion the small ovens for the benefit of those who have a capacity of three to four times higher, more rotating ovens will become available. Selling them for the value of its scraps does not correspond to the possibility of offering a new fundamental option for the management of solid municipal waste, at a lower cost, without being sandwiched between the landfill site or the incineration option. It is up to entrepreneurs to make a difference.
