After investing EUR10m over the past two years to improve its environmental performance, Lafarge France’s La Malle plant, located in Bouc Bel Air, is continuing its emissions reduction strategy by investing nearly EUR1m additional in its equipment. The objective is to welcome a new sulphur-free fuel from the circular economy as well as wood fines, and to reduce sulphur emissions by 10 per cent through the use of alternative fuels.
La Malle plant (Holcim group) agreed on 29 April to reduce its sulphur emissions from the clays transformed on the site, and from the fuels used to fire the kiln. In 2021 the cement plant used had a thermal substitution rate of 41 per cent and by 2030 the facility plans to use waste for 65 per cent of its thermal energy demand.
In a few weeks' time, the La Malle cement plant will also be fully capable of integrating wood fines into its fuel mix. The framework is already under construction for the commissioning of wood-based fuel injections into the fuel mix in kiln No 1 at the end of August 2022. Kiln No 2 has already passed the test phase and the development of a system allowing the use of this new fuel.
The use of wood ends will lower the share of high-sulphur fuels such as petcoke in the combustion process, thus helping to reduce sulphur emissions by an additional 10 per cent. With a forecast consumption of around 20,000tpa of wood fines, the cement plant provides a circular solution for the final treatment of waste that was previously not recycled.
Pascal Baudoin, director of Cimenterie La Malle said, “La Malle is asserting itself as a key link in the area's industrial circular economy. As part of our environmental roadmap and our objective of carbon neutrality, we have naturally invested in this lever for the future, which is the recovery of wood waste from the building industry, in their finest fractions which remained until difficult to value today."
