Advanced exergoenvironmental and thermo-sustainability evaluation of cement plant, splitting the environmental impact into endogenous and exogenous parts: a case study

The paper presents an advanced exergoenvironmental and thermo-sustainability analysis of a dry process, 5-million ton capacity cement plant with real-time operational data. The analysis was based on component-wise modelling by separating the exergy destruction (ED) into endogenous, exogenous, avoidable and unavoidable parts for the two production lines, L1 and L2. The result shows an exergy efficiency ( p ) of 55.58% for L1 and 58.22% for L2. Additionally, the overall exergoenvironmental factor (EEF) was calculated at 6.47% for (L1) and 5.89% for (L2), with the rotary kiln (RK) having the highest (EEF) of 53.7%. Conversely, the advanced exergy analysis showed that the plant's mainstream ED rates are endogenous and unavoidable. The component sustainability index (SI) for L1 and L2 ranged between 1.3 = SI = 4.401 and 1.301 = SI = 4.758 , respectively. Similarly, the sustainability results show that the environmental destruction coefficient (EDC) and the environmental destruction index (EDI) were high in L1. Nonetheless, the study identified components with high potential for improvement, making system design and optimization suggestions possible.

Automated summary

This paper presents an advanced analysis of the exergoenvironmental and thermo-sustainability of a 5-million ton capacity cement plant using real-time operational data. The analysis focuses on component-wise modeling and separates the exergy destruction into different parts for two production lines. The results show varying levels of exergy efficiency and exergoenvironmental factor for the different components, with potential for improvement identified in the study.