Students from the Universidad Europea have visited the facilities of the El Alto Factory, of the Cementos Portland Valderrivas Group.

On this occasion, it was the Department of Civil Engineering of the School of Architecture, Engineering and Design of this University, which, as part of its annual program of visits to works in progress, got a close look at the facilities of the El Alto Factory, of Grupo Cementos Portland Valderrivas, belonging to the FCC Group.

The students connected in situ the theoretical basis of the chemical industry, with industrial technological processes, as well as the way of organizing and working in a key sector for industrial growth in Spain.

The head of quality control at the factory, Germán García, showed the facilities of this cement manufacturing plant and explained the manufacturing processes of the different types of cement they produce, their most important characteristics and their impact on the environmental quality of the factory and its surroundings.

The factory is the largest producer in Spain and one of the main ones in Europe. It has three rotary kilns, its own limestone quarry, a crushing facility for up to 1,500 tons/hour, two gray cement production lines with a capacity to produce 3,500 tons/day each, and a white cement line with a capacity of 1,000 t/day.

The students asked about how the current price of electricity is affecting their production (which led them to paralyze their activity in the past for a few days in March); the measures that are being implemented to comply with the maximum volume of CO2 emissions imposed by the European emissions directive; how emissions trading works; and the integrated environmental authorization to which the cement company is subject.

The objective of the Universidad Europa is to promote teaching methodologies that favor the contact of its students with the labor reality, with the companies of each sector and, in the specific case of the Department of Civil Engineering, with the works, promoting the development of skills and abilities that, together with the theoretical knowledge of the different areas, generates a student body prepared to face different labor challenges and to enter the labor market immediately.