Amid the snow and ice of Salt Lake City, Utah, about 930 cement production personnel, equipment manufacturers, and service providers convened at the Salt Palace Convention Center this past December for International Cement 1998. The show was sponsored by Cement Americas (formerly Rock Products Cement Edition).

The first day of presentations began with Christian Douvre, vice president of Lafarge Group's cement plant performance & technology division. Douvre gave his keynote address on Lafarge's perspective on the issues and challenges of alternative fuels and energy sources.

Doug Shumway, environmental manager at Mitsubishi Cement's Cushenbury, Calif. plant, made a plea to cement producers to make the connection between the product and the public benefit of that product. "If the public realized the benefit that minerals, agriculture, and industry provided their lifestyle," he said, "they would be more willing to assume the insignificant risk [to the environment] to manufacture that product."

President of Delta Toxicology, Dr. Kathryn Kelly, updated attendees on her findings regrading the health effects of (or lack there of) burning waste fuels in cement kilns. Dr. Kelly was followed by Gerald Young, manager-process and environmental engineering for Penta Engineering, who discussed NOx formation reactions, emissions, and control techniques in rotary cement kilns.

Consultant Roy Grancher delivered his annual report on the U.S. cement industry. He talked about several major capacity-expanding projects across the nation, while warning producers of the possible impact Asian imports may have on the booming U.S. cement industry. Steven Miller, manager-process design at Fuller Co., told of his company's efforts to improve fuel consumption and emissions by means of modern cooler, cyclone, and calciner technology. The first day of presenters concluded with a brief overview of the U.S. Geological Survey's 1997 Annual Cement Survey and 1998's year-to-date surveys (through September) by Hendrik van Oss, cement commodity specialist, USGS.

Day Two opened with a presentation by Arun Goyal, general manager, Arawak Cement Co. Goyal examined his company's use of orimulsion as a fuel. Mark Stillwagon, manager of supplemental materials, Allentown Cement, and Craig Wahlquist, manager of technical services at Cadence Environmental Energy, then presented an overview on how they built a tire-derived fuel program at Allentown's Evansville, Pa. facility.

The modernization of Holnam's Devil's Slide plant-which was visited the next day by attendees-was addressed by Rich Warren, Holnam's technical services engineer, and plant Production Manager Mark Hill. St. Lawrence Cement Environmental Director Andre Auger covered the burning of tires at his company's Joliette operation in Quebec. Karsten Visby-Kjaergaard, project manager at Aalborg Portland Cement, then reviewed his company's seven-year experience with a white clinker kiln's FGD and heat-recovery system.

Jean-Pierre Degre, vice president-business development for the Corporate Industrial Ecology Division of Holderbank, gave a talk on strategy and principles for alternative fuels and raw materials. Next, Ivan Bertrand, manager-lab automation at FLS Automation, and Oscar Anagonez, control specialist for Cementos de Chihuahua, co-presented a paper on a control system modernization project for Cementos de Chihuahua.

Randy Wiley, Southdown's maintenance manager, gave a case study of physical modeling at the company's Lyons Plant in Colorado. Finally, Robert Kahn, president of MSR Solutions, offered considerations for evaluating a biosolids injection program in a cement plant.

Following the two days of presentations, more than 150 attendees toured Utah's only two cement plants. The first stop was Holnam's Devil's Slide 700,000-tpy-capacity dry processing plant, which was modernized in late 1997.

On the way to the second plant, Ash Grove Cement's Leamington site, conference attendees got to drive through a section of Utah's $1.59 billion Interstate 15 project, the largest design/build public works project in the United States. The project is expected to be completed by July 2001.

The final stop was Ash Grove Cement's 840,000-tpy Leamington operation, located at an elevation of 5,000 ft. It also was recently expanded in 1996.

International Cement 1999, the 35th annual cement seminar (sponsored by Cement Americas) will be held in Walt Disney World Village, Orlando, Fla., from Dec. 5 to 8, 1999. The theme of the conference will be "Building to 2000: Increasing Productivity while Maintaining Quality."