2013

The sixth warm summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and the world is still turning, despite what mankind is doing to its planet‘s surface and atmosphere. Which makes this a fitting topic for our agenda! Our daily task is, of course, to work hard to secure our jobs and position our employer successfully on the market. Stock market analysts, who are not interested in „all-in“ cost analyses, are satisfied only provided a state and its GDP (and thus its enterprises) grow and grow and grow, and..., however. The „negligible“ side effect is that resources are becoming increasingly scarce and increasingly expensive, and that our weather is also becoming ever more extreme and unpredictable. A resources-intensive industry (RII) such as the cement industry accepted these facts and the principle of sustainability at a very early stage, and has since been constantly searching for practicable solutions. The change from the wet to the „(semi-)dry process“ cut energy needs by half in the early 1960s. Use of the most advanced, „Made in Germany“, technologies also opened up significant new potentials, and made the inclusion of new resources possible. As usual, we start our sequence of topics with raw materials and quarrying, and follow through to the mill, all the while looking at process optimization and chemical analysis procedures. This month, however, we also focus on this topic in a series on Alternative Fuels and Raw Materials (AFR). A standardized „mass“ product with guaranteed properties cannot be achieved without prior chemical analysis, technical processing, process control and, of course, Quality Assurance, however - there must be no detrimental effects on the process, or the product, or the environment!

So learn, with us, how waste can be converted to useful alternative fuels and feed materials with no undesirable effects and - from practice for practice!

My team and I wish you enjoyable and inspiring reading!

Dr. Hubert Baier
Editor-in-Chief
ZKG International