Going Green With Cement Production

Everywhere you are seeing the idea of going green in producing just about everything even in one of the most energy intensive industrial manufacturing processes there is. Cement production is a key component for commercial and residential construction in the world and as places like China come on line with increased uses of it, it is a must to be cleaner and greener. They have continuously looked for cleaner more efficient ways to make cement and have come up with production techniques that not only use less energy for instance in a place like the Sparks precast concrete facility, they have come up with production techniques that help with other environmental opportunities.

It is quite clear that like many things, concrete and other cementation products have both environmental advantages and disadvantages. The raw materials in cement such as limestone, marl and chalk are available in large quantities as is the silicon needed which comes from clay, sand and shale. The iron and aluminum can come from iron ore and bauxite and it can come from recycled metals also. The final product, gypsum, is a common calcium and sulfur based mineral that's in abundance. A typical concrete mix that might be used at the Fontana precast concrete facility consists of twelve percent Portland cement, thirty-four percent sand, forty-eight percent crushed stone and six percent water.

Another environmental win is the use of fly ash which is a by-product from coal-fired power plants. Fly

ash can be used as a substitute for some of the cement. It not only is good for getting rid of the by-product it also can increase concrete strength. Other industrial waste products that can be used in the production include blast furnace slag, cinders, and mill scale are sometimes added for some of the aggregate in the mixes. Recycled concrete can also be crushed and reused in concrete mix.

As gas prices increase, the cost of getting the raw materials to the plants increases and the cost of products like a precast concrete vault also increases. Energy consumption is the biggest concern in the production of cement and concrete. One of the areas of major concern is in the use of energy for operating the rotary cement kilns. For this reason new dry-process kilns are becoming more and more efficient than the older wet-process kilns. One of the advantages to these extremely high temperature kilns is they can burn waste fuels much more effectively than the municipal solid waste incinerators. That means fuels like used motor oil, spent solvents, printing inks, paint residues, old tires and cleaning fluids can be used and burned relatively safely with less pollution than the current methods of burning them.

Everywhere that concrete and cement is being used, the benefits of being environmentally conscious is showing. From a Sparks precast concrete facility to a Fontana precast concrete facility, products like a precast concrete vault are benefiting of the use of fly ash and many other steps moving into the greening of cement and concrete production.