In order to get a better understanding of the material and its condition, we are visiting our customer industries in the course of WP1 T1.3. We want to gain experience of how the demolition process works, i.e. the manual activity, the storage and also the waste management, in order to find recycling opportunities here as well. One of RHI Magnesita’s customer industries is the lime industry.

Alexander Leitner, Thomas Zoescher, Sandra Koenigshofer and I had the rare opportunity to visit an annular shaft kiln during repair time and evaluate possible recycling opportunities. The plant manager was so kind to give us a detailed explanation of the kiln and the processes. He also informed us about the different product types in the lining, before we went to the aggregate.

This kiln is only shut down every 4 to 5 years and checked for defective spots. If they find a damage, only these areas are replaced or repaired. On site, we went 34 m up to one of the combustion chambers. That was quite impressive. We could join the lining evaluation and also the manual activities during the breakout and repairing the damaged areas.

We must admit that we were very pleased to see how good the condition of our products, which were installed in this kiln, was after 5 years of continuous operation. Especially, when you consider that they have to withstand temperatures of around 1,300 °C on a daily basis.

Back on the ground, we then had the opportunity to sample the excavated material and assess the condition and texture of the material. Since the excavated material was not pre-sorted, we sampled what we considered to be interesting pieces from different furnace areas.

This valuable experience will certainly benefit us in the further course of the project.