The cement production sector is one of the energy-intensive ones and, today, with the increase in the price of gas, the cost of production has exploded.

In the kilns for the production of cement it is possible to use, as fuel, that part of the waste coming from separate collection which, through mechanical recycling, is discarded because it is no longer recyclable.

This refusal of the refusal, unusable in view of a reintegration into the circularity of the products, can have three ways:

• The chemical recycling (little)

• The landfill

• Use as a fuel

According to data processed by Federbeton Confindustria, the costs of producing cement have increased by 50% due to the cost of energy, in fact gas has increased by eight times and petcoke, a fuel used in the plants, increased three times compared to January 2020.

How to mitigate the problem?

This is where CSS comes into play, an acronym that indicates precisely that mass of waste that is no longer recyclable, which gives a good thermal yield in plants for the production of cement in replacement of fossil fuels.

CSS is considered a 0 kilometer fuel as it is produced abundantly in every country, not subject to international blackmail and cheap.

Despite this mass of combustible waste still ends up in landfills or transported abroad for its use, with costs in economic terms for their disposal and production of pollution in the transport phases, their use in a structural way is still quite relative in Italy.

If we consider that the use of CSS in Europe varies between 60 and 80%, depending on the country, in Italy we stop at around 20% or a little more.

The increase in the use of CSS in cement plants would certainly help to reduce the environmental impact that non-recyclable waste has, reducing its discharge in landfills, pending a consistent development of the chemical recycling of non-recyclable waste.

According to the REF laboratory, which has elaborated an estimate on the possible use of CSS in Italy, the percentage of replacement of fossil fuels as fuel through waste could be of the 66%, which would lead to a lack of CO2 emissions of approximately 6.8 million tons.

Why don't this fuel take off?

In Italy, although the technology of the systems allows a wide use of CSS, and although the emission standards can be controlled through filtration systems common with that of other systems Europeans, there remains a basic mistrust, both politically and socially, of the use of waste as a fuel.

In some countries of northern Europe, notoriously green, on waste incineration plants that produce electricity, it is possible to ski, thus inserting these industrial activities in the urban context.

In Italy these plants are still today, despite the current very poor energy diversification, subject to discrimination by some political forces.

CSS can be considered a renewable source such as wind, sun or water, which produce electricity and which will have to replace fossil sources in the most as fast as possible, if we want factories to continue to operate, our homes can receive electricity for our consumption and our electric machines can circulate.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.