Ecological assessment of the environmental impact of waste from cement production enterprises

Abstract

This article considers an integrated ecological assessment approach to the impact of cement production enterprises on the environment, particularly air, soil, water resources, and vegetation cover. The CONCH Cement enterprise and its sanitary protection zone are considered as the study object. The stages of cement production—including raw material crushing, transportation, clinker production, clinker grinding, and storage and loading of finished cement—are analyzed as the main sources of dust-aerosol formation. The use of snow cover as a natural integral dust collector indicator, calculation of dust load, comparison with background values, soil and vegetation monitoring, and GIS-based ecological mapping are proposed. An approach is developed to integrate automated dust-gas monitoring, differential pressure monitoring of filters, recording of wind parameters, and laboratory monitoring into a unified system. The numerical indicators are model data intended to demonstrate the methodological approach rather than actual laboratory measurements.