The University of Seville and the Andalusian Labour Foundation for Cement and Environment (FLACEMA), Spain, have signed a scientific collaboration agreement to launch an industrial research project into a tool to optimise the electricity cost of cement plants using artificial intelligence (AI).

Power accounts for around 18 per cent of total production costs in Spanish cement plants, significantly eroding their competitiveness on the global market.

The research, which has seen significant advances in terms of mathematical approach, will make use of various AI tools, including neural networks, backpropagation algorithms and genetic algorithms. It will enable cement plants to optimise electrical costs in two ways. Firstly, it will focus on the optimal recombination of certain variables that intervene in the industrial process and of regulated prices. Secondly, the market price prediction model will be designed to optimise the purchase of electricity.