Co-processing book launch at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Dehli

Kåre Helge Karstensen (SINTEF) co-authored the book “Sustainable Management of Wastes through Co-processing” together with two Indian colleagues, Mr. Ulhas Parlikar, an expert on resource efficiency and circular economy and Prof. Sadhan Kumar Ghosh of Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

The book was published in November 2021 by Springer, Singapore. This is the world’s first comprehensive book that deals with different aspects of co-processing.

The book launch was hosted and organised by the Royal Norwegian Embassy at their premises on 18 August 2022, and was attended by 40 participants from the cement industry, research organisations, consultants, equipment suppliers, academia UN organisations and the Municipal Commissioner of Srinagar (Jammu & Kashmir).

The opening remarks were made by Ms. Martine Aamdal Bottheim, Chargé d’affaires of the Royal Norwegian Embassy. She talked about India-Nordic partnership and high-level discussions on ‘Blue Economy’ and ‘Marine Litter’ and Norway’s commitment to a binding agreement by the countries to tackle the issue of marine litter. She stressed the importance of co-processing in Indian cement industry for reaching carbon neutrality and achieving resource efficiency. She shared anecdotes on her visit to an Indian cement plant along with SINTEF in May this year. She appreciated the efforts by the Indian and Norwegian authors to jointly work on the first comprehensive book on co-processing, which will be valuable in furthering the cause of achieving higher substitution of fuels with wastes.

Dr. Kåre Helge Karstensen of SINTEF gave an overview of the outcomes achieved in 10 years of Indo-Norwegian collaboration on Co-processing. The collaboration achieved several milestones such as building capacity of the regulatory authorities and industry, shaping the policy landscape around co-processing and conducting pilot demonstrations with CFCs, RDF, and other wastes in cement plants.

This was followed by the book launch by Ms. Martine Aamdal Bottheim, Chargé d’affaires of the Royal Norwegian Embassy, in presence of the three authors and the publisher (Springer). Dr. Kåre Helge Karstensen, Mr. Ulhas Parlikar, and Prof Sadhan Kumar Ghosh (the three authors) talked about the importance and timely publication of the book for the industry, academia and other relevant stakeholders. The authors mentioned that this book gives framework and guidance for both the plants starting with co-processing and the matured plants which are achieving high thermal substitution rates already.

During the panel discussion on the importance of Co-processing for the Indian cement industry, the representatives from JK Lakshmi Cement, KHD Humboldt Wedag, Geocycle, Shree Cement, National Council for Cement and Building Materials (NCCBM) and ACC Cement briefly mentioned their respective activities and their journey on co-processing, its importance and what the future priorities should be. There were requests for more books on co-processing, documenting the success cases and business-operations models for priority waste streams. During the Q&A session, Mr. Khan, the Municipal Commissioner of Srinagar, asked about ways to build capacity of cement plants in Jammu & Kashmir and to manage solid wastes generated from Srinagar city more economically; several valuable inputs were received from the authors and participants.

Ms. Marit Strand, Counsellor & Head of Cooperation of the Royal Norwegian Embassy, gave the closing remarks and thanked all attendees for their active participation. She invited everyone to the high tea where the participants engaged in one-to-one discussions on issues of interest.