Abstract
The cement industry is highly energy-intensive, consuming approximately 7% of global industrial energy consumption each year. Improving production technology is a good strategy to reduce the energy needs of a cement plant. The market offers a wide variety of alternative solutions; besides, the literature already provides reviews of opportunities to improve energy efficiency in a cement plant. However, the technology is constantly developing, so the available alternatives may change within a few years. To keep the knowledge updated, investigating the current attractiveness of each solution is pivotal to analyze real companies. This article aims at describing the recent application in the Italian cement industry and the future perspectives of technologies. A sample of plant was investigated through the analysis of mandatory energy audit considering the type of interventions they have recently implemented, or they intend to implement. The outcome is a descriptive analysis, useful for companies willing to improve their sustainability. Results prove that solutions to reduce the energy consumption of auxiliary systems such as compressors, engines, and pumps are currently the most attractive opportunities. Moreover, the results prove that consulting sector experts enables the collection of updated ideas for improving technologies, thus giving valuable inputs to the scientific research.
Highlights
Accepted: 26 March 2021The production process in cement manufacturing plants is typically energy-intensive and requires large amounts of resources [1]
To fill the gap caused by the absence of an Italian study, the contribution of the present paper is to show the Italian current situation and future perspectives of energysaving technologies for cement plants, expanding the knowledge on energy efficiency measures
Based on the results, it is possible to say that Italian companies will likely invest in technologies with a high relative frequency distribution value
Summary
The production process in cement manufacturing plants is typically energy-intensive and requires large amounts of resources [1]. Given the significant impact that the manufacturing industry has on global sustainability and considering the increasing economic pressure introduced by a competitive market and the reduction of available energy resources, optimizing the energy efficiency of production systems has become a primary concern [1]. For this purpose, to reduce energy consumption in the cement sector, it is possible to act both on a technological and a managerial level [4]. Focusing on the technological aspects, one of the strategies to be embraced is to improve production plants by modifying or replacing inefficient equipment with better-performing and less energy-intensive ones [5,6]
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