Limestone flour is utilized in many industries in Poland

What is it about?

Limestone flour is fine grained limestone. Limestone flour is used in a variety of industrial sectors such as power and heat generation, glass-making, paper-making, the construction industry and construction materials manufacturing, the production of agriculture, plastics and rubber goods, as well as coal mining, and environmental protection. The paper aims to characterize and interpret the limestone flour supply and demand trends in the main applications in Poland in the last decade. The paper analyses the potential of the limestone flour production from the available limestone rock deposits with respect to the current and future needs of the domestic market in Poland.

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Why is it important?

Limestone rock from individual deposits has numerous and different applications. This mineral raw material is commonly used in the production of cement and lime as well as crushed-stone aggregates, construction products, and fertilizers. In the mid-1990s a new important direction of this rock utilization, however in the ground form, emerged in Poland. Limestone flour, which is the subject of this study, over the last 20 years has become ever more important, mainly due to its growing consumption in the power industry in the wet limestone FGD systems. The installation of FGD was forced by increasingly stringent environmental regulations regarding the emission of harmful gases from the power industry. This played a crucial role in the demand growth for the domestic limestone industry products in Poland, and therefore, the condition of this industry itself. The development of limestone flour utilization played a decisive role in the transformation of the Polish power industry towards reducing its adverse impact on the environment. Currently, the consumption of fine-grained limestone flour as an SO2 sorbent in the power industry may be estimated at 2.3–2.4 million tpy, while the total demand for ground limestone in the energy sector in Poland may approach 3.3–3.4 million tpy.