Unlike developed countries, nobody in Montenegro has yet thought of using the ash from the Thermal Power Plant "Pljevlja", which is generated as waste in the production of electricity, for the production of numerous building materials.
Sadik Bambur, president of the NGO "Eko Pljevlja" and a long-time chief engineer for ecology at the Pljevlja Thermal Power Plant, says that the possibility of using the substitution of ash with slag in industrial production, and especially in construction, that is civil engineering, should be reconsidered.
According to him, ash can be used in road construction, production of hollow bricks and blocks, dry mortars, as well as ceramics and insulation materials.
He says that the Balkan countries are in the last place in Europe in terms of the use of this material as a secondary raw material, while its utilization is high in the European Union.
Everything goes to the landfill
In 2008, 15 EU member states consumed 18 million tons of ash in the construction material and road construction industry.
That ash, together with water, is transported through pipes to the Maljevac landfill, one of the ecological black spots in the municipality of Pljevlja. If it were to be used, the Thermal Power Plant could earn about one million euros annually from ash, given that the price of ash on the market is about two euros per kilogram.
Given that fifteen million tons of ash have been disposed of in the 28 years of operation at the landfill, it is not difficult to calculate that a potential 20 to 30 million euros have been buried in Maljevac.
Bambur says that the main reason that ash and slag have not been used until now is that it was considered to be purely waste.
There are old projects
"It should be our general interest to see all ash as a prepared mineral raw material with certain hydraulic-binding properties, which can be used in many areas with minimal energy consumption. The sooner the economic and ecological effects are great, the lower the energy consumption , there is no excavation of raw material, stone, crushing and purification. Why don't we at the municipal level, together with TE, including construction experts and operatives, build a test local road of several hundred meters, and later, maybe a longer road. Others are doing that too." , says Bambur.
And the president of the Pljeval municipality, Dr. Filip Vuković, believes that the ash from the Thermoelectric Power Plant should be valorized. He says that the plan is to use the ash in the future cement plant, the construction of which has been talked about in Pljevlja in recent years.
He recalled that at one time, until the Pljeval cement plant was closed, tests were conducted on the use of fly ash in the production of cement and that positive results were obtained when grinding clinker with ash.
"The TE is in the phase of designing permanent transport and disposal of ash, reconstruction or eventual construction of new systems and a new location for the ash dump, so it would be good to fit into those projects in order to leave the possibility of separating a quantity of fresh ash, at the very source in the TE for further use", emphasizes Bambur.
The German company offered to cooperate
In Elektroprivreda and Temolektrana Pljevlja, no one has seriously dealt with this issue until now, except that it was announced that part of the ash would be used in a cement plant, which was supposed to be built in the municipality of Pljevlja.
Elektroprivreda was also ready to hand over the ash to the future owner of the cement plant for free, considering that the costs of its transportation and storage would be reduced.
Last year, the Thermal Power Plant Pljevlja received an offer from the German company "Schauenburg", which expressed its willingness to start production of foam (lightweight) concrete in the area of the municipality of Pljevlja, where ash produced as a product of coal combustion in the thermal power plant would be used as the main raw material.
The mayor would like the ashes to be used
According to "Vijesti" information, so far no one has seriously considered this offer, although the local administration is also familiar with it.
"We know that ash is also a big problem in your environment from the aspect of eco-protection, which makes our program acceptable and very useful. We are interested in whether there is a possibility of using ash from the thermal power plant for the production of foam concrete, whether you as a company are interested in this technology, and if you are not interested as a company, can there be another legal or physical person who would use your ash in production. Is it necessary to establish contact with the local community?", are the questions that the Germans submitted to the Pljevlja Power Plant.
Along with the offer, representatives of the German company also provided an explanation of foam concrete production technology.
The German company "Schauenburg", among other things, deals with technological solutions for drying and transporting ash and its high-quality disposal.
And the president of the Pljeval municipality, Dr. Filip Vuković, believes that the ash from the Thermoelectric Power Plant should be valorized. He says that the plan is to use the ash in the future cement plant, the construction of which has been talked about in Pljevlja in recent years.
Vuković notes that not all amounts of ash could be used in the cement plant, but that other possibilities should be considered. The municipality of Pljevlja tried on several occasions to introduce an environmental tax that would be paid, among others, for ash and slag from the Thermal Power Plant, but it was declared unconstitutional, even though the prices were incomparably lower than those in England.
Serbia is better by 2,7 percent
At the round table, recently organized by Balkanmagazin in Belgrade, it was heard that in Serbia, the construction industry uses 2,7 percent of the approximately six million tons of ash produced in thermal power plants per year.
"In Serbia, 200 million tons of ash are currently deposited on an area of about 1.500 hectares," said the head of the environmental protection service of the EPS, Saša Miletić, stating that the deposit of ash costs the EPS eight euros per ton, or about 50 million euros per year.
According to him, dry, fly ash is suitable for use in the production of cement, concrete, road construction, there is a great demand for it in Europe, which is why there is no ash landfill.
Ash is wanted on the market
Miletić said that in 2008, 15 EU member states consumed 18 million tons of ash in the construction material and road construction industry.
When asked by a journalist why ash is not exported from Serbia, he said that transport costs are high, but added that EPS is thinking about building port capacities for ash export, which would be located on the Sava and Danube rivers, next to thermal power plants.
Miletić said that fly ash was used during the construction of many large buildings in Europe, the Castor and Pollux buildings in Frankfurt, the Picasso skyscraper in Madrid, a large bridge between islands in Denmark, the High Dam in France and the "Burj Khalifa" building in Dubai, where about 50.000 tons of fly ash were used.
"That's why the problem of ash in Europe actually doesn't exist, because there is a huge demand for it. Also, it's not worth it to dump ash in landfills, because the fee for dumping the material, for example in England, is 40 pounds per ton, and soon it will be increased to 59 pounds per ton of material," Miletić said at the meeting.
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