Lafarge Mykolaiv completes environmental project upgrades

The Lafarge cement plant in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, has completed the overhaul of its filtering and electrical equipment to reduce its dust emissions and meet local regulation requirements.

At the end of 2010, Lafarge Ukraine started the implementation of a new environmental project: the reconstruction of the electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) of four rotary kilns, from September 2010 until March 2011, with a staggered scheduling according to the Kiln winter stoppages. The scope of the project was similar for all kiln ESPs: keeping the housing and support structure, exchanging internals filters and electrical components required to achieve the dust emission performance figures.

Results

The improvement became obvious right after the implementation of the project. While the Ukrainian law sets the emission limit at 800mg/m³ for kilns without alternative fuels, the dust emissions were reduced by more than 60 per cent. In the normal operating mode:
• they are below 50 mg/m³ for the kilns fed with alternative fuels;
• they reach 150mg/m³ for a kiln in which no alternative fuels are burned.

About the Mykolaiv Cement Plant

Mykolaiv Cement Plant was built in 1950 and acquired by Lafarge in 1999. Most of the plant's wet line equipment has been operational for over 60 years.