Advanced analyses of solid waste raw materials from cement plant using dual spectroscopy techniques towards co-processing

Abstract

A tremendous amount of cement solid wastes from the cement plant still considered an environmental obstacle. The trend of co-processing widely accepted with the growing attention to the environment. On the spot and fast chemical analyses will provide tangible support to the decision maker to allow such an earlier mentioned material to go through co-processing and monitor the quality. In this study, modern chemical analysis methods were employed to assist the possibility of waste material co-processing within the cement plant. Real samples were collected from a cement plant in Egypt to validate and support the approach of co-processing. The samples were analyzed using two advanced techniques of Laser-induced breakdownspectroscopy(LIBS)and inductively coupled plasma optical emissionspectrometry(ICP-OES). In this study, the results show that the composition of the collected samples contains the principal elements required for clinker and cement production. However, some heavy metals and other hazardous elements exist, but the concentration is below the accepted range of the specifications. In the present work, the ICP has used as a confirmation tool for the laser-induced breakdown simple analysis of cement raw materials. The results can suggest considering this approach implemented for effective co-processing in the cement plant. The combination of using LIBS analysis followed with ICP-OES offer very efficient approach suitable to provide enough information to decide on the cement solid waste materials to go through co-processing.