2021 Duderstadt
For the 11th SEC Technology Tour, we invited participants to Eichsfeld from 12–13 September 2021. The programme included a guided tour of the romantic half-timbered town of Duderstadt, a shared evening meal followed by an overnight stay in the vicinity of Duderstadt. The next day, the “Technology” aspect took centre stage: in the morning, we had the opportunity to learn about the processing of plastic waste, which is used as fuel by the neighbouring cement works. To round off the tour, we visited the cement works in Deuna in the afternoon.
Duderstadt is one of Germany’s most beautiful half-timbered towns, which we visited on the afternoon of our arrival, a Sunday. Afterwards, we travelled to Fuhrbach, where we had dinner together and spent the night.
The next morning, we had arranged to meet B+T Group in Deuna. B+T Group (based in Alsfeld) is a nationwide association of individual companies from the waste management sector. It carries out operations in northern Hesse, Lower Saxony and Thuringia. Its strength lies in logistics! At the site of Deuna Zement GmbH, pre-sorted commercial waste is specifically processed into refuse-derived fuel in accordance with the requirements of the cement works, where it is used directly as fuel.
The Deuna cement works of Dykerhoff GmbH was founded in 1975 and currently produces approximately 2 million tonnes of cement per year, particularly cement for precast concrete products. The refuse-derived fuel supplied by B+T is burned there in two huge rotary kilns. At the Deuna cement works, it accounts for approximately 80% of the fuel mix. The visit also included a bus tour of the limestone opencast mine north-west of the cement works.
A report on the excursion appeared in Nachrichten aus der Chemie: Nachr. Chem. 2021, 69 (12), 91.
Wolfgang Gerhartz
Hans-Uwe von Grabowski
in July 2021