Potential assessment of solar industrial process heating and CO2 emission reduction for Indian cement industry

For the Indian cement sector, a simple approach is presented to evaluate the potential of solar industrial process heating (SIPH) and the resulting decrease in CO₂ emissions. The first step was to identify the locations of cement plants with their annual installed capacity and their annual actual cement production. After that, the yearly process heating requirement for the calcination process at each cement plant has been estimated using the actual annual cement production value. Finally, using the concept of a top-of-tower (TT) solar plant design, the total thermal energy that could be saved has been estimated as 771.35 Petajoule (PJ) /annum. Finally, the adoption of the SIPH system with storage is expected to mitigate CO₂ emissions by 45.2 MT (Megatons) annually. By utilizing renewable energy sources in the cement manufacturing process, energy consumption and CO₂ emissions will be reduced.