CH2M HILL wins pact to design world's largest cement plant

CH2M HILL, a global full-service engineering, construction and operations firm, has secured a contract from FL Smidth Inc. (a leading supplier of cement process equipment and cement plant engineering) to provide facility and infrastructure design services for a greenfield cement manufacturing plant. The plant will be owned and operated by Holcim Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Holcim Ltd. of Switzerland.

Holcim's new greenfield plant will be built on 3,900 acres along the Mississippi River in Ste. Genevieve County, Mo., and will feature the largest single clinker production line anywhere in the world with a capacity of 12,000 tons per day of clinker and 4 million metric tons of finished cement annually. The plant will utilize the most advanced technology and equipment, making it one of the lowest-emission cement plants in the world.

CH2M HILL is providing structural, architectural, electrical and mechanical design for the plant, whose focal point will be a pyro-process system consisting of an ILC 5 stage preheater (in excess of 400 feet high) and a 6.6-meter-diameter, 93-meter-long kiln. Two vertical roller mills will be utilized for raw grinding and four OK vertical roller mills will be provided for cement grinding. Finished cement will be loaded out by barge, rail and truck.

"We are very excited to have been selected to be part of the Holcim-FLS team," said Michael Gearhart, CH2M HILL's division manager.

CH2M HILL said the scheduled commissioning for the plant is in 2009, with the design completed by summer 2007.