Cement production is an energy intensive industrial process that requires heat to be supplied at high temperature levels under the constraints of gas-solid heat exchange phenomena and the kinetics of chemical reactions. In this paper, the use of Pinch Analysis and Process Integration techniques to optimize the energy efficiency of the cement production will be explored. The aim is to use process modeling to characterize cooling and heating requirements of the process, focusing on the gas-solid heat exchanges while including waste fuel utilization. The heat cascade model is adapted to account for gas-solid and gas-gas heat recovery used to calculate the heat recovery in the process. A mixed integer linear programming problem is solved to calculate the integration of the available heat; this model optimizes the heat recovery and the energy conversion efficiency considering different fuels, heat recovery options and process operating conditions. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.