Vol.24, No.2, 2024, pp. 199–205
https://doi.org/10.69644/ivk-2024-02-0199

The traditional ceramics industry uses large amounts of raw materials and energy while significantly contributing to the CO2 footprint. The improvements, primarily in the first two areas, will contribute to sustainable development and answer the emerging questions of decreasing a gas-release footprint. These are topics of high importance considering European Union goals, and thus, on the contrary, there is yet only scarce available literature on the subject. This paper describes the state and future perspectives of the traditional ceramics industry through the techno-economic lens. Many options are detected that save resources (waste materials), energy consumption (reparation or modification of kilns, usage of dry pressing in ceramic tiles production, etc.), and control of flue gas composition (changing the fuel, etc.). Further intensified research is needed to widen the knowledge and compare the results. In the first place, the composition of flue gas should be determined by the same methods and presented using unified units. The lowest energy consumption and flue gas composition are determined in ceramic tiles production by the dry route. Using a downdraft gasifier of biomass in brick manufacturing increases the internal rate of return if a longer tunnel kiln is applied. The expected payback period is from 4 to 8 years.

Keywords: traditional ceramics industry, techno-economic analysis, energy saving, CO₂ footprint