Green Turn

National Cement Dedicates First U.S. Plant Engineered To Run On 100% Alternative Fuels. By Don Marsh National Cement Company of Alabama Inc. has completed a generation-level plant upgrade at its Ragland location, the $300 million investment certain to drive respective capacity and carbon dioxide emissions/ton metrics on sharply higher and lower trajectories versus prior plant performance.  Ragland Kiln 2 has…

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BEUMER Group Delivers Palletizers to Cruz Azul

BEUMER Group was commissioned by the Cooperativa La Cruz Azul, headquartered in Mexico City, to supply 14 high-capacity palletizers in response to new legal requirements. Cruz Azul, required to change its production from 50 to 25-kg bags at the beginning of 2023, must handle twice the amount of bags while maintaining the same capacity. What has been partly implemented in…

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Cement Shipments Flat in July

Total shipments of portland and blended cement, including imports, in the United States and Puerto Rico in July 2022 were an estimated 9.6 million metric tons (Mt), essentially unchanged from shipments in July 2021, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Shipments for the year through July totaled an estimated 62.0 Mt, an increase of 3.3% from those for the same…

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Purified Slag Product Tested as Cement Alternative

Finnish company Betolar is exploring the possibility of using slag that is purified from vanadium, which could replace more than 10% of the cement used in Finland. Betolar is investigating the utilization of slag from the steel industry in the production of cement-free concrete. Betolar does not produce concrete itself, but using the Geoprime solution developed by the company, concrete…

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CEMEX Implements Hydrogen Technology in Dominican Republic

CEMEX has confirmed that it is implementing hydrogen technology at its cement plant in San Pedro de Macorís in the Dominican Republic. The project is part of the “Future in Action” program, which seeks to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Currently, the use of CEMEX’s hydrogen technology includes injection into furnaces to optimize the combustion process and thus increase the…

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Industry Employment: Prepare for the Future

Among the most frustrating aspects of life as we went through the pandemic, and which haunts us still today, is the employment picture. There is no minimizing the magnitude of human tragedy, with an official tally of over 5.2 million hospital admissions and a stunning 1.04 million deaths; the sheer human loss is unspeakable.  But for the vast majority of…

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Talking Carbon 

I’ll state the obvious: carbon is a hot topic right now. Portland Cement Association (PCA) Chairman Ron Henley (GCC America) told a New York Climate Week gathering that U.S. producers have exceeded expectations outlined nearly one year ago with release of the PCA Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality. That is good news. What is happening in the North American market is…

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