Holcim Philippines to construct waste heat facility

Holcim Philippines will construct a waste-to-energy  facility to reduce the demand for coal as a cement plant fuel in Davao City. Roland Van Wijnen, chief operations officer of Holcim Philippines, said that the facility will include structures and buildings which are aimed at storing more rice husks, identified as a viable fuel alternative for the cement plant.

The plant consumes about 600t of coal to power its cement plant, and only about five per cent are alternative fuel. “Coal eats up about 40 per cent of our production costs," Joseph Bernal manager of Holcim’s cement plant said. He said that with the alternative fuel feeding system, the company hopes to source 30 percent of the cement plant fuel from alternative wastes such as rice husks, and most of the rice husks will be sourced from Davao region.

“From 40 per cent we hope to lessen coal costs to about 28 per cent of our production cost,” Bernal said.

Van Wijnen says the project will help Davao in disposing their other wastes, however, he said that the alternative fuel for the plant should have been properly segregated as they would rather focus on wastes that can no longer be recycled or reused into other products. He cited coconut husks, which can still be recycled into other materials. Van Wijnen said that the savings from the facility will outstrip the cost of its installation. Also, the infusion of the capital for the project will expand the amount of wastes that the company can store. They are targeting to implement the project this year up to 2013.