PROCESS MAPPING AND PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF LIFE CYCLE IMPACT IN INDIAN CEMENT PLANTS

The Indian cement industry is the second largest in the world with an annual production of about 280 million tonnes. Though the environmental impact is significant, little has been done on process mapping, and associated accounting of the energy consumption and emissions in the cement plants. The salient features of cement production in India that distinguish it from other scenarios are highlighted. The present work proposes a framework and sets guidelines for the life cycle assessment. The computing of the energy requirement and CO2 emissions is done for a typical cement plant considering ordinary portland cement (OPC) and fly ash based portland pozzolana cement (PPC). The values obtained indicate that the impacts could be much lower than those computed in other countries.