Reduction of environmental pollution through optimization of energy use in cement industries

Industrial development has lead to higher energy consumption, emission of greenhouse gases, as well as air pollutants. Cement factories play an important role in over all greenhouse emissions. This study aims to investigate the role of Iranian cement industries and their contribution of greenhouse gases contribution. The measured emission factors for oil and fuel gas shows that carbon dioxide contribution from fuel oil based cement industries is almost 2.7 times higher than gas based cement factories. The strength, weakness, opportunity and threat technique analysis showed that the best strategy to combat greenhouse gases from Iranian cement factory is to implement energy efficiency measures. Further, strategic position and action evaluation matrix analysis indicates that Iranian cement industries fall within invasive category. Therefore, exploitation of opportunities must carefully be used. One of these opportunities is the utilization of financial assistance provided by clean development mechanism. The results show that replacement of ball mills with vertical roller mill can reduce the electricity consumption from 44.6 to 28 kWh/ton. As a result of such substitution about 720 million kWh/y of electricity would be saved (almost a power plant of 125 MW capacities). Though implementation of new mills may not be economic for the cement industries’ owner, but the overall gain for the government of Iran will be about US$ 304 million. If the duration of such efficiency measure is considered as about 12 y, then the overall CO2 reduction/phase-out would be around 4.3 million tons.