For the last 20 years, French cement plants have been putting their kilns at the disposal of companies and municipalities to incinerate industrial and other wastes, saving on production costs and cleaning up the environment in the process.

French companies are using special industrial waste to fuel kilns to the necessary 2,642 degrees F. This results in the destruction of the wastes at great efficiency without generating toxic residues or emitting fly ash.

Organic compounds are transformed into simple molecules, like water or carbon dioxide, while heavy metals and halogen salts are neutralized in the clinker that produces the cement. All analyses up to this point have shown that the cement quality is not affected by using alternative fuels.

Besides the obvious environmental reasons for doing so, French producers are finding there are economic reasons for incinerating waste.

"Cement producers prefer to burn waste that is nearly free as opposed to expensive, market price fossil fuels," said Daniel Lemarchand, international development manager at Teris, the replacement-fuel arm of the French water treatment company Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux.

According to government estimates, in 1998 waste burning saved 300,000 oil-equivalent metric tons. Instead, the cement industry has helped eliminate around 600,000 mt of waste. One-third of all the country's special industrial waste is now eliminated in joint treatment centers. With this success in hand, French companies are increasingly offering their expertise and experience abroad.

Residues from cars, cows Industrial waste tends to have a high calorific value and can replace fossil fuels. For example, a high proportion of used oils, greases and solvents finish their lives in cement plants.

Used tires are another form of composite waste much appreciated by cement producers. They contain polymers with high calorific value that can replace fossil fuels, and a steel carcass that can satisfy the requirements for iron in the clinker. Some plants are combining them beforehand, while others use special equipment to load them into the kiln as they are. In Alsace, in eastern France, Ciments d'Origny has started an ambitious program of used-tire recovery. The company equipped its cement works at Altkirch with an automatic system for handling shredded tires. It is now in the process of establishing a regular supplier.

French automaker Peugot SA, together with a recycling firm, Compagnie Francaise des Ferrailles, have built a plant near Lyons in central France for the disassembly and recovery of scrap vehicles. The materials and remnants that cannot be recovered are ground up and burnt in a neighboring kiln.

Near Bordeaux, in southwestern France, a cement plant owned by Ciments Calcia burns various special wastes, including animal meal from slaughterhouses. This has been particularly useful since the onslaught of the "Mad Cow Disease" crisis that has swept across Europe.

Teris and Recuperation Traitement Regeneration (RTR), both subsidiaries of Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, specialize in the production of replacement fuel for cement facilities. RTR has opened its fourth plant for the treatment of waste oil near two cement plants in the Bordeaux region. The installation, which cost about $3.3 million, treats 20,000 mtpy of waste, receiving tankers of industrial hydrocarbon waste, such as lubricants, oils, adhesives and solvents. The most liquid waste is inserted untreated as fuel into the kilns. The most viscous, such as adhesives or heavy hydrocarbons, are mixed with sawdust from furniture factories. This impregnated sawdust is loaded into the kilns in the same way as coal.

French cement producers are not restricting themselves to the elimination of industrial waste, however. Many are considering burning dehydrated sludge from urban water treatment plants.

Some are even thinking about burning the remains of household waste after the removal of recoverable materials, such as glass and metals. This sorted waste could then be finely ground and used in the production of cement, rather than being dumped into landfills or burned in ordinary industrial incinerators.

Ciments Calcia facility at Bussac-Foret (Dordogne) burns animal meal and other wastes in its kiln.

NEWSMAKERS BLUE CIRCLE INDUSTRIES (BCI) named David Lovett chief operating officer for heavy building materials

FINANCIAL NEWS Consolidated sales for CEMENT FRANCAIS for the six months ending June 30 increased 12% against the same period in 1998.

CEMEX announced that Metallurgical Industries Co., an Egyptian government entity, accepted its conditional offer to acquire ASSIUT CEMENTS CO., the largest cement producer in Egypt. Cemex would purchase as much as 90% interest in Assiut from the Egyptian government for US$12.90 per share, or up to US$372 million. The transaction must be approved by the Egyptian government and is expected to be completed sometime in 1999. Assuit Cements has a 4 million-mt production capacity and a net debt of US$209 million.