Displaying items by tag: ground granulated blast furnace slag

Ireland: Eocem Ireland has introduced new corporate branding following growth in the Ecocem Group across Europe. The rebrand has been timed to tie in with group integration and new product launches. The ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) producer has adopted a new logo with a company tagline – ‘Innovation Powering Sustainability’ – to accentuate the group’s innovation and environmental sustainability. Ecocem says that the rebrand of Ecocem Ireland, which is tied in with a rebrand across the group, is an indication of the revised focus of the group over the coming years.

“It is an exciting time for the Ecocem Group as there are many areas that we are working on with our innovation teams that will bring targeted solutions to customers across Ireland and the UK enabling them to benefit from using increased percentages of GGBS within their market offerings,” said Micheál McKittrick, the Managing Director for Ecocem Ireland.

Ecocem says it is Europe’s largest independent specialist producer of GGBS cement with a capacity of 2.4Mt/yr. Developments in the organisation have seen a growing interaction across its operating regions in Ireland, Holland, France, UK and Sweden, as well as the emergence of new products. Ecocem Ireland is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ecocem Materials and it operates a slag grinding plant in Dublin Port.

India: The Rourkela Steel Plant has more than tripled the price it is receiving for blast furnace granulated slag since early 2017. Previously the steel plant was selling its slag to a local cement producer, according to the New Indian Express newspaper. However, since moving to using online auctions to sell the by-product the prices have risen. In early 2017 the Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram alleged that the price of slag was being fixed. However the steel plant countered that it lacked railway infrastructure.

Indonesia: Krakatau Semen Indonesia (KSI), a joint venture between Krakatau Steel and Semen Indonesia, has launched a slag grinding plant in Cilegon, Banten. The 0.69Mt/yr ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) plant had an investment of US$31m, according to the Jakarta Post newspaper. Construction at the site started in 2014. Both the companies running the venture are state owned and they own an equal share each in the plant.

UK: Hanson has re-opened its ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS) grinding plant at Teesport Docks in Middlesbrough. Euro2.4m has been spent on starting up the plant again and 20 new jobs have been created.

The plant was mothballed in 2009 following the financial crisis in 2007. A continuing upturn in construction activity prompted Hanson to return to the site in 2016 and prepare it for re-opening. Slag for the plant will now be imported following the closure of a local steel plant.

“It has taken nine months to get up and running again. One of the main problems we had to overcome was to replace all the copper wiring, which had been meticulously stripped out by thieves,” said site manager Duncan Felgate.

Hanson sells its ground granulated blast furnace slag under the Regen brand name and operates a further two UK production plants at Purfleet in Essex and Port Talbot in south Wales.

France: Ecocem France has ordered a Loesche type LM 46.2+2 CS mill for a slag cement grinding plant that it is building in Dunkirk. It follows a previous order by Ecocem of a LM 46.2+2 CS mill for the dry grinding of ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) at its plant at Fos-sur-Mer.

The LM 46.2+2 CS for the plant in Dunkirk is designed for the grinding of cement clinker and granulated blast furnace slag at a capacity of 105t/hr GGBFS. The gearbox will have a capacity of 3150kW.

All the mechanical equipment for the grinding plant starting from mill feed to the product discharge into the product silos is included in the Loesche scope of supply. The Loma heater type LF 28-L will be a full-inlined type designed to burn natural gas as well as blast furnace gas. The burner supplied by Loesche will be the MSBZ type, complete with fitting rack and local switch cabinet.

The lead-time for the main components of the mill and for the additional units included in the scope of supply is 6 to 13 months. The commissioning of the vertical roller mill is planned for the middle of 2017.

Ecocem’s grinding plant will be installed close to Arcelor steelworks for use of their granulated blast furnace slag. This LM 46.2+2 CS will be the seventh Loesche vertical roller mill installation for slag and cement grinding in France.

Indonesia: PT Krakatau Semen Indonesia has ordered a slag grinding mill from Loesche for its Cigading grinding plant in Cilegon, Banten. Krakatau Semen will use a Loesche mill with an LDC classifier to grind ground granulated blast furnace slag to a fineness of 4500cm²/g. The scope of supply for this contract also includes the raw material transport system, the mill dust extraction system, the reject system and the silo equipment. The mill is scheduled for operation by the first quarter of 2017.

Subsidiaries of Loesche are participating in the contract. Loesche ThermoProzesstechnik is supplying the grinding plant with a hot gas generator type LF-36L (fully inline) for the combustion of industrial diesel oil. Automation of the plant is supplied by Loesche Automatisierungstechnik. Loesche Indonesia will provide a service contract including personnel services. In addition, Loesche will monitor the local production as well as the assembly and commissioning.

PT Krakatau Semen Indonesia was founded in November 2013 as a state-run company. In a joint venture with PT Semen Indonesia, PT Krakatau Semen Indonesia is building its first plant of this type with a planned production of 0.75Mt/yr.

India: Tata Steel has launched a new ground granulated blast furnace slag product in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Around 40 potential customers from the construction, ready-mix concrete and engineering sectors attended the launch event. Speakers at the event included Rashid Merchant from RMC India Readymix and PN OJha from the National Council for Cement and Building Materials (NCCBM). Other senior officials from Tata Steel were also in attendance.

Indonesia: Krakatau Semen is set to start producing ground granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) at its Cilegon plant by December 2016. The joint venture between Krakatau Steel and Semen Indonesia is due to produce 300,000t/yr of slag powder, according to Bisnis Indonesia. The company has invested US$36m into building the plant. Construction started in 2014.

India: JSW Cement started building a 2.4Mt/yr cement grinding plant in January 2016 at Salboni in West Bengal. The US$119m plant will produce both Portland slag cement and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS). It is planned to be finished in the first quarter of 2017. Environmental clearance for the project was granted in mid-January 2016.

Raw materials for the grinding plant include 0.74 – 095Mt/yr of slag and 1.50 – 1.76Mt/yr of clinker. The slag will be sourced from Tata Steel and the Steel Authority of India. Originally the site was intended for a 10Mt/yr steel plant, according to local media.

World: The ferrous slag market in 2014 was worth an estimated US$30bn. It is forecast to grow by 1.6% to US$36bn by 2025, according to a new report from Smithers Apex.

'The Future of Ferrous Slag to 2025' examines the factors affecting ferrous slag production to provide a basis for forecasting the quantities likely to be produced up to the year 2025. It looks at current and possible future applications of slag and describes the trends in regulations affecting the market.

The current potential market supply of blast furnace slag is estimated to be 447Mt, of which almost 295 – 300Mt is granulated blast furnace slag (GBS). The making of steel from blast furnace iron through oxygen conversion (or basic oxygen furnace, BOF) contributes a further 140 – 145Mt of slag and the alternative route to steelmaking through electric arc furnaces (EAF) supplies more than 50Mt.

According to the report, the total output of ferrous slag is expected to increase only slowly, or to stagnate and decline marginally, because EAF steelmaking capacity is expected to grow faster than BF-BOF steelmaking capacity. This effect can already be seen in the US, where the tonnage of steel produced by EAF plants overtook the tonnage produced by BF-BOF plants in the 1990s. Since then, further decline in BF-BOF output has led US-cement and aggregate companies to start importing slag and to invest in new coastal slag treatment installations dependent entirely on imported supplies.

Changes in the Chinese steel industry will contribute substantially to this rising share of EAF steel in world supply. China produces half of world crude steel and BF-BOF steelworks account for over 80% of China's steel output. The Chinese government is campaigning to replace small and inefficient steelworks with EAF installations.

In the current market, it is estimated that total production of ferrous slag of all types amounts to US$24.5bn. While it is possible that supply will increase only slowly, if at all, there is growing demand for slag products, which is likely to ensure that the value per tonne of slag products will increase. The growth in demand has been accelerated by environmental legislation and by direct intervention from governments and international bodies.

Demand for slag products has been affected by market cycles. The collapse of construction activity in Europe, as a consequence of the financial crisis, reduced sales of slag for cement and aggregate use. Over the medium term, there is every prospect that demand will outrun supply. Currently GGBS meets only an estimated 17% of global cement supply. Slag products as aggregate substitutes meet only 1 - 1.5% of total demand.