Traditional industry is the base of China's modern industrial system. Reporters learned from the ongoing World Cement Congress that in 2023, the cumulative cement output of Enterprises above the national scale was about 2.023 billion tons, ranking first in the world for 38 consecutive years. Cement production accounts for more than 50% of global production, and annual carbon dioxide emissions exceed 1.2 billion tons.
How to better realize the green and low-carbon transformation of cement has become a difficult problem for many cement enterprises. How should they transform, what is the effect of transformation, and what difficulties do they face in the process of transformation? The program went to a cement factory in the mountains to have a look.
The cement plant, with an annual output of 4 million tons, is located in a large mountain depression. Not only is there no dust flying, but the whole plant area is decorated with various vegetation like a garden.
For cement plants, the link of exploiting raw materials is often the most destructive to the environment. Staff told reporters that their cement plant began to analyze the environment and ecology before it started production. Environmental problems have been
solved, but new problems have arisen. In the mining process, the operators found that the distribution of mineral deposits here was very uneven, and the content of active ingredients in different batches of ore was very different, which made the operators very distressed. After
several investigations, the factory tried to introduce a set of intelligent mine car dispatching system, which was used to reasonably match the raw materials of different qualities mined in the mining area, and solved the problem of inconsistent quality of raw materials at once, and the efficiency was more than 10 times higher than that of the original manual dispatching. At present, the digitalization of the cement plant has made new progress. They use digital twin technology to build a virtual mining area in the digital world.
Digitalization has changed the traditional cement plant, and the national policy of large-scale equipment renewal has greatly benefited the plant. At the scene, a conveyor belt carrying ore through the mountain attracted the attention of reporters. The person in charge of the
enterprise told reporters that it was through a series of digital transformation and the policy support of large-scale equipment renewal that the energy consumption per unit product of the whole enterprise was reduced by 6.8%, the manufacturing cost of the product was reduced by 14.29%, and the labor productivity was increased by 30%.
Cement industry ignites the new "engine"
of green low-carbon development. Through the first-line research of journalists, we can see that the application of digital intelligence and the landing of green low-carbon technology have made enterprises taste sweet. In fact, not only this enterprise, at present, China is vigorously promoting the transformation and upgrading of green low-carbon digital intelligence in the cement industry. In January
this year, the state launched the Opinions on Promoting the Implementation of Ultra-low Emissions in Cement Industry, which calls for the implementation of ultra-low emissions in cement and other industries. By the end of 2025, significant progress will be made in key regions, striving to complete the transformation of 50% of cement clinker production capacity, and large state-owned enterprise groups in the region will basically complete the transformation of organized and unorganized ultra-low emissions; By the end of 2028, cement clinker production enterprises in key regions will have basically completed the transformation, and the whole country will strive to complete the transformation of 80% of cement clinker production capacity. This marks the comprehensive implementation of ultra-low emission transformation in another traditional industry after coal-fired power plants and iron and steel industry in China.
Cement enterprises speed up "going to sea" and actively expand overseas markets
. Cement is the main building material for buildings, roads, bridges and other infrastructure. When the cement industry carries out scale statistics, the production capacity of clinker, the semi-finished product of cement, is also an important indicator for the actual production capacity of cement. As the largest cement producer and consumer in the world,
China's cement production has been ranked first in the world for a long time. In recent years, as China's cement enterprises accelerate the pace of "going out", they have injected vitality into the economic development of overseas investment countries, and at the same time, they have also improved the level of global infrastructure construction.
According to the statistics of China Cement Network Cement Big Data Research Institute, by the end of 2023, the overseas clinker production capacity of domestic cement enterprises has expanded to 64.65 million tons, an increase of 35% over the same period last year; by the end of March 2024, Chinese enterprises have built 54 cement plants in 21 countries overseas. At a time when the
industry is facing severe challenges, it is of immeasurable strategic significance and practical utility to actively promote the upgrading of large-scale production equipment and actively promote the energy-saving technological innovation and environmental protection upgrading and transformation of the cement industry, so as to enhance the core competitiveness of cement enterprises and realize the grand blueprint of sustainable development of the industry.
To this end, China Cement Network will hold the 11th China Cement Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Technology Exchange Conference-Equipment Renewal Forum in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province on June 13-14. This forum will gather government leaders, industry technical specialist, scientific research institutions, universities, cement enterprises and equipment suppliers to discuss and analyze the practical path of equipment renewal and green upgrading in the cement industry, so as to promote the industry to move towards a more energy-efficient, greener and environmentally friendly future.
