Environmental impact assessment of cement plants and estimation of pollutant load on environment in India

A study conducted on the aspects and their associated impacts i.e. Aspect Impact analysis in a cement plant situated in India to understand the degree of environmental impact of cement plants. It is observed that around 60% of operations fall under significant aspects. The main significant aspects found in different operations are Particulate Matter (PM) emission from stacks, fugitive emissions and gaseous pollutant emissions from the stacks in various discharge points of the plant. The study was conducted to find the total emission from a cement plant through sampling analysis in different discharge points by using Aerosol spectrometer and gas analyzer. Further total emission from all the cement plants per year throughout the country is estimated on the basis of total cement production per year. It is estimated that the total dust load on environment per year from one of the cement plant in India is 207.5 tons, fugitive emission is 449.8 tons and gaseous pollutants i.e. SOx, NOx and CO2 were estimated to 58.27 tons, 50.47 tons and 945,157 tons respectively. If this figure extrapolated to India’s total cement production, the emission quantity will come around 106,750 tons of PM, 29,135 tons of SOx, 25,235 tons of NOx and 472,578,500 tons of CO2 considering 500 Mn Tons of cement production per year. The pollutant loads are huge on environment as estimated here. Hence it is suggested to prevent the pollution from its source by using suitable pollution control methods to reduce the impact on environment. At the last part of the study an environment management model is proposed which will be helpful for the industries to implement suitable environmental protection measures in their facilities to achieve sustainability goals.