Displaying items by tag: US

US: Charah has opened a slag grinding plant at the Port of Coeymans near Albany, New York. The unit uses the company’s proprietary process to grind granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) to create supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs). The site is accessible by ship, truck and rail and will sell materials to concrete producers in the northeast of the country.

The new plant will also produce slag cement that is marketed under the MultiCem brand. Slag cement will be distributed throughout Charah Solutions’ MultiSource materials network, a nationwide distribution system of more than 30 sourcing locations that provide ready mix concrete (RMX) producers and other customers SCMs, including fly ash and slag cement.

US: Residents of Muscatine County, Iowa have asked local government to take action about the use of slag in road construction. The decision follows an investigation by Askew Scientific Consulting into whether heavy metals were present in the slag, according to WQAD television. Data from the study was sent to the Iowa Department of Public Health, which concluded that high levels of manganese might cause adverse health effects from regular exposure to slag and slag dust. The county started using slag to repair and maintain roads in 2008.

Askew Scientific Consulting used samples and data from SSAB, the company that supplies the slag. However, SSAB has said that samples used in the study were taken earlier in the slag-making process, not from slag ready to be used on the road, and pose a limited health risk to people.

US: Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, has warned that Orcem Americas’ proposed slag cement plant in Vallejo breaks state environmental laws. In a letter to Vallejo's planning and development services co-ordinator he said that the project would violate the California Environmental Quality Act, according to the Irish Times newspaper. Becerra also raised issues with nitrogen oxide and CO₂ emissions. The intervention is an unusual move, as the state's attorney generals do not normally intervene in planning disputes.

Orcem Americas’ chief executive officer (CEO) Stephen Bryant said that a new environmental impact report would be prepared to address Becerra’s concernsd by the end of November 2018. The company, a subsidiary of Ireland’s Ecocem, is proposing to build and operate a US$50m slag grinding plant in Vallejo. However, the project has faced opposition from local environmental groups.

US: Harsco has appointed F Nicholas Grasberger III as chairman of the board of directors. He succeeds David C Everitt, who has served as non-executive chairman since August 2014 and a director since 2010. Everitt has been appointed independent lead director.

Grassberger was elected to the board in 2014 following his appointment as president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. He joined Harsco in 2013 as chief financial officer (CFO) and has held progressively responsible financial and operations executive positions throughout his career. Prior to joining Harsco, Grasberger served as the managing director of the multinational Precision Polymers Division of Fenner. Before joining Fenner, he served as the CFO of Armstrong Holdings, the parent company of Armstrong World Industries, and later as CEO of Armstrong’s Building Products division.

Additionally, Carolann Haznedar has been elected as an independent director of the board. Haznedar is the recently retired Senior Vice President, Americas for DuPont Performance Materials. She holds more than 30 years of management experience, leading several global businesses in different industries during her tenure at DuPont.

North America: A survey by the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association (NAIMA) has revealed that its members used over 0.3Mt of recycled blast furnace slag in the production of thermal and acoustical insulation in 2017. The survey included data from both US and Canadian production plants.

Producers also used over 0.9Mt of recycled glass to produce residential, commercial and industrial thermal and acoustical insulation. Since the industry’s recycling program began in 1992, NAIMA estimates that its members’ plants have diverted an estimated 26Mt of recycled materials from the waste stream.

“Our industry is tremendously proud of the substantial use of recycled content in the production of energy saving insulation products,” said Curt Rich, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of NAIMA. “These products ultimately reduce building energy use and decrease our carbon footprint. Over the long term, the fibre glass and mineral wool insulation industry expects to continue using substantial amounts of recycled content in the production of insulation products.”

US: Charah has purchased SCB International to jointly develop and deploy technologies including fly ash beneficiation and mineral grinding technologies. Its intentions are to target: the beneficiation of fly ash for sale to concrete producers; processing kiln dust to remove mercury for emissions regulations compliance; and grinding granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) and pozzolan for sale to concrete producers. Charah says that the acquisition will also allow it to more than double the volume of materials available to its customers.

“By leveraging SCB’s diversity of materials available and by benefiting from their experience in sourcing materials overseas, we see great potential in marketing the fly ash beneficiation and grinding technologies to our customers, both utilities and concrete producers,” said Scott Ziegler, Vice President of Ash Sales and Marketing at Charah.

As part of this agreement, Charah has acquired SCB’s proprietary fly ash beneficiation technology which will allow Charah to improve the quality of fly ash produced by electric utilities and to increase Charah’s supply of fly ash to concrete producers in the US. Charah also will deploy grinding technologies for GBFS and pozzolan and will market these supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) to the manufacturers of concrete products.

Both the ash beneficiation and the mineral grinding technologies will support Charah’s expanding MultiSource fly ash distribution network. The MultiSource fly ash network will help ensure that Charah can provide a steady and reliable supply of SCMs for ready mix concrete producers throughout the US.

Charah provides ash management, fly ash sales and marketing and utility support services for the coal-fired power generation industry. Its services include landfill design, construction, management, operations and closure; fly ash, bottom ash and gypsum sales and marketing; ash pond management and closure; structural fill projects; and power plant support services including limestone supply and flue-gas desulfurisation operations

US: The Slag Cement Association (SCA) has presented its 2017 Project of the Year Awards at the American Concrete Institution (ACI) Convention in Salt Lake City in late March 2018. Each project was selected by the SCA’s Technical Marketing Committee because of its exemplary and innovative uses of slag cement in concrete mix design. Nine awards were presented in categories for architecture, durability, green design, performance, innovative application and sustainability. Member companies involved in the winning applications included Lehigh Hanson, LafargeHolcim, Votorantim St Marys Cement, Ash Grove Cement, Skyway Cement Company and Argos USA.

“The SCA’s awards program does a great job of showcasing how versatile slag cement can be, and how it can help create stronger, more durable and sustainable concrete structures,” said Ed Griffith, president of the SCA.

US: Legislation removing the ‘waste’ classification of steel slag in Pennsylvania has received final approval in Pennsylvania. The bill will now been sent to the state governor for enactment, according to the New Castle News newspaper. Previously, mills and slag processors had to obtain special classification from the state Department of Environmental Protection to sell the product.

US: The Slag Cement Association (SCA) says that slag cement shipments in 2017 grew by 14 year-on-year. This follows a growth of 12% to 2.7Mt in 2016. The SCA says this shows increasing demand for slag cement in the US.

“As consumers are becoming more aware of the variety of benefits and applications associated with slag cement use in construction, they also start to rely on its consistency,” said Ed Griffith, president of the SCA. “The reliability of the product seems to go over well with the industry, it’s nice to see the shipping trends reflect this industry awareness.”

US: Residents in Anaconda, Montana have put questions to a proposed copper slag processing plant project as part of a community outreach initiative. Premier Industries wants to build a plant to use copper slag left over from the local copper industry to produce proppant, a material used in oil fracking and natural gas extraction, according to the Montana Standard newspaper. The project, first announced in early 2016, is scheduled to start operation by the end of the first quarter of 2018. Questions from the local community covered jobs, the financial viability of the project and increased traffic.