Lafarge Africa’s Ewekoro plant, some 50km north of Lagos, in Ogun state, Nigeria, pioneered the use of alternative fuels in the country. The company charts the milestones and looks at the future challenges in transforming biomass waste to a source of wealth for the company and local communities. By Abdel-Ileh Chouar, Lafarge Africa, Nigeria.
In 1995, one of the projects carried out by Segun Shoyoye, a young, newly-employed engineer at Lafarge Africa Plc, part of LafargeHolcim, was to fire the kiln at the company’s 3.5Mta Ewekoro plant in Ogun state, Nigeria, with discarded tyres. It took three long months to develop a process with an adequate quantity of rubber chips to sustain continued operation of the kiln for at least half an hour using alternative fuels (AFs). The impact on gas consumption was instant – a 75 per cent decrease.
