Use of alternative fuels and alternative raw materials in Turkish cement sector

Cement sector in Turkey as in all over the world replaces the primary fuels and raw materials with the wastes conforming to acceptance criteria. Wastes with calorific value are used instead of conventional fuels. Wastes with mineral value are used for lime, which is the cement raw material, and other minerals.

Alternative fuel use, which was 88 thousand tons in 2008, reached about 920 thousand tons in 2019. This figure corresponds to an approximately 7 % thermal substitution ratio. In 2019, amount of wastes used as alternative raw materials was about 1.7 million tonnes. This means cement sector recovered total 2.6 million tons of waste as alternative fuel and alternative raw material in year 2019. This article covers the development of waste utilization and application of legislative requirements in Turkey related to waste usage by the cement sector.

Turkish cement sector is willing to increase the thermal substitution rate to 46 % as in the EU. Using “Waste derived fuel” (SRF-solid recovered fuel) produced by pre-treating municipal solid wastes is a major key to increase the thermal substitution rate to that of EU average. This article also describes our potential, savings, bottlenecks and actions of Turkish Cement Manufacturers’ Association (TÇMB) in opening the way to increase the usage of municipal SRF.

Author: C.D. Gencel

Section: Waste utilization

Keywords: waste, utilization, alternative fuels, municipal solid waste, cement kiln