Economic evaluation of using of geopolymer from coal fly ash in the industry

At the present time, almost every area needs using of secondary raw material sources. This trend is most obvious in the industry, mainly in the area of materials production, when there is a possibility of economic effectiveness increasing during production. Also, the contribution of secondary raw material using is not negligible in the area of living environment protection, since it can use the waste of industrial production again. The task of this contribution is an economic evaluation of using a geopolymer from coal combustion as a possible alternative raw material. The basic input is the cost of materials for the manufacture of concrete using of Portland cement with fly ash as a substitute for cement and fly ash as an additive to concrete. Evaluation is carried out based on analysis of the possibilities to reduce the total price of material costs for the production of 1 m(3) of concrete, with possible using in the industry. The main method for economic evaluation of using geopolymer is the classical cost calculation. The results of the analysis show possible reducing of cost, which is possible through replacement of cement by fly ash more than 18 % of the material.Web of Science21214513

Unconventional oil resources exploitation: a review

Unconventional crude oil sources are geographically extensive and include the tar sands of the Province of Alberta in Canada, the heavy oil belt of the Orinoco region of Venezuela and the oil shales of the United States, Brazil, India and Malagasy. High production costs and low oil prices have hitherto inhibited the inclusion of unconventional oil resources in the world oil resource figures. In the last decade, developing production technologies, coupled with the higher market value of oil, convert large quantities of unconventional oil into an effective resource. From the aspect of quantity and technological and economic recoverability are actually the most important tar sands. Tar sands can be recovered via surface mining or in-situ collection techniques. This is an up-stream part of exploitation process. Again, this is more expensive than lifting conventional petroleum, but for example, Canada's Athabasca (Alberta) Tar Sands is one example of unconventional reserve that can be economically recoverable with the largest surface mining machinery on the waste landscape with important local but also global environmental impacts. The similar technology of up-stream process concerns oil shales. The downstream part process of solid unconventional oil is an energetically difficult process of separation and refining with important increasing of additive carbon production and increasing of final product costs. In the region of Central Europe is estimated the mean volume of 168 million barrels of technically recoverable oil and natural gas liquids situated in Ordovician and Silurian age shales in the Polish-Ukrainian Foredeep basin of Poland.Web of Science21325724

On the strategic planning, innovation activities and economic performance of industrial companies

Proposed paper deals with the “in-situ” situation of strategic planning, innovation activities and consequent economic performance of Czech and Slovak industrial companies based on questionnaire research results. The relations between selected parameters were aimed and statistically tested on the sample of 254 industrial companies active in Czech and Slovak republic in years 2009-2011. Four hypotheses were evaluated, with the goal of enlightening mutual relations of strategy-innovations-performance behavioural characteristics of the studied companies. In findings, there is well apparent, that written detailed strategic document has mostly bigger companies (above 250 employees and gross annual turnover over 1 bill. CZK), who plan longer in advance (mostly 5 to 10 years or 3 to 5 years) than smaller companies that have more often concise written (a plan mostly from 1 to 3 years in advance) or not written strategic document (11 to 50 employees and gross annual turnover 11 to 100 mil. CZK). The (industrial) companies with written detailed strategic document are continually active in innovations and experienced strong positive progress in volume of production (over 30 %) and earnings - profit (over 30 %) in research period. The analyses have shown that medium-sized and big industrial companies experienced growth up to 30 % of gross annual turnover meanwhile the costs fall up to 30 % during the examined period 2009-2011. Change in volume of production in the course of the period 2009-2011, there is significant correlation to change in gross annual turnover and change in earnings (profit) in the course of the research period. These finding can be interpreted as empirical confirmation of the reasonability of thorough strategic planning with respect to dynamics and innovation necessity. Strategic and innovative industrial companies apparently passed through the period of slow growth without substantial problems, which most likely suffered above all micro enterprises.Web of Science201251

Optimizing of the Balanced Scorecard method for management of mining companies with the use of factor analysis

The managers of information age companies cannot rely merely on data derived from past activities of the company and focus on improving existing processes. They need a frame for measuring values that result from strategic goals of the company, a tool, which is focusing on obtaining information about company's current success, as well as finding new driving forces to ensure the future competitiveness of the company. Strategic business performance measurement system the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a suitable tool for improving the competitiveness of industrial companies. During its implementation, however, there is a conflict of perception of the importance of individual goals and measurable characteristics in partial perspectives of the BSC and its actual enforcement of the various strategic objectives in companies. The aim of this article is to verify the accuracy of BSC settings in an environment of selected companies in the Moravian-Silesian region with the emphasis placed on mining companies with the help of multidimensional statistics - factor analysis. The research took place in 2015 in cooperation with managers from the Moravian-Silesian Region (MSR), and it was divided into two kinds of research - quantitative and qualitative.Web of Science22444743

Newly verified occurrences of industrial minerals in Belize

Modern society is characterised by functional infrastructure and sufficient number and variety of materials in the form of various technical goods. All these achievements of civilisation are not only the result of human skills, but their material principles are based on industrial minerals. This group of materials includes a wide range of the natural raw materials which are used in many industries. This includes the raw materials for the manufacture of glass, ceramics or fillers. For other raw materials, new applications are just being developed. These materials are very desirable in the market. Not only are their supplies endless, but they occur very unevenly in the natural deposits and unlike most metals can't be recycled. Due to low production costs in the production of this type of the raw materials, the competition in the global market has significantly increased during recent years. With this growing trend has significantly increased the interest in these materials in developing countries, which is precisely the Central American country of Belize. In the context of the cooperation, project has been verified several economically interesting sources such as ceramic clay, bentonite, feldspar and carbonate materials.Web of Science22222421

Analysis of ecological intensity of metallurgical production

Ferrous metallurgy is inherently a highly intensive field in terms of energy and raw materials. The impacts of high energy intensity are enormous: the necessary production of larger amount of energy related to high emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases, associated with increasing negative impacts on the state of the environment and the health of inhabitants. The article suggests the possibility of using the method of structural analysis to calculate direct and complex ecological intensity and to use it as a basis to determine the ecological intensity of the individual metallurgical technologies. The processing of ecological structural model can significantly contribute to the identification of ecologically intensive final products and can improve the decision-making process in this area.Web of Science54126926

The impact of production capacity utilization on metallurgical companies financing

Web of Science52113713

The conditions for implementing a circular economy in the Czech Republic

In July 2018, measures of the European Commission regarding the Circular Economy Package (CEP) came into force. All EU Member States have two years since to implement these measures into their national legislations. The aim of the authors is, using available resources, to evaluate current conditions in the Czech Republic in the areas affected by this legislation. It is primarily the area of waste management, which has set values within the CEP that must be achieved within those two years. The article offers an analysis of the circular economy penetration into the Czech legislation. The procedure for introducing changes in legislation is presented through the Waste Management Plan (WMP) for the period 2015-2024. The aim of the article is to verify whether whether the Czech Republic is able to meet the EU and WMP's requirements in the current development of waste management. The authors are first to use the analysis of secondary data from national and transnational sources, from which they created unique and original outcomes for the given issue. After the analysis, they introduced the measures that could be used for the greater motivation of the target groups in order to meet the goals of the Czech Republic. The authors address the concrete impacts of CEP implementation within the Czech Republic and also present Czech examples of good practice.Web of Science24437536

Evaluation of the functionality of bankruptcy models in mining companies

Mining companies are an important part of the national industry of the Czech Republic. Since mining companies are important for the industry, it is necessary to predict their economic development. Moreover, forecasting the economic development of an enterprise in terms of the risk of bankruptcy is an important activity for the financial management of any enterprise. One of the ways to predict economic development and assess the risk of possible bankruptcy is to use bankruptcy models. The aim of this paper is to determine the most appropriate model for predicting the bankruptcy risk of a mining company. The subject of the article is to identify the most suitable bankruptcy models applicable for bankruptcy risk prediction in Czech conditions of mining enterprises and to verify their functionality on real data of mining enterprises. On the basis of a search of expert sources and comparative analysis, it was found that the most suitable models for predicting the development of the enterprise in terms of bankruptcy risk are modified versions of traditional bankruptcy models. The analysis showed that the bankruptcy models are the IN05 Index, Altman's analysis for Czech companies and the modified Taffler's index. The authors' team conducted a thorough analysis during which they verified the functionality of the selected bankruptcy models on real data of mining companies. After a thorough analysis to test the functionality of bankruptcy models on real data from mining companies, the most appropriate model for estimating the evolution of bankruptcy probability risk was identified.Web of Science27376675

Methodology for calculating the cost price of the bending process for the needs of manufacturing logistics

The research of this paper aims to characterize and describe the methodological sequence of operations necessary for the correct calculation of the cost price when performing a bid calculation in the bending process step on a bending machine. The research focuses on determining the methodology and its application exclusively to sheet metal parts in the engineering industry in the processing of steel and stainless-steel sheets. To research this issue, we used empirical and quantitative research in a real work environment. The methodology for calculating the cost price of bending sheet metal parts yields the relationships between component inputs, the result of which is a time parameter that is expressed by the actual production costs. The results can be used in the real working environment of manufacturing companies for comparison with already established practices and a verification of their outputs. At the same time, it is possible to use the determined methodological procedure as a basis for implementation in the Aurendi web application.Web of Science9436836