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Reduce Energy Consumption: Cement Production

How Conducting Manufacturing Energy Assessment Can Help Identify A Wide
Range Of Changes To Help Reduce Consumption. Metering, Power Quality,
Load Shedding, Motor Management, Power Factor, And Energy Optimization
All Can Help Cement Operations And Other Plants, As Well.
Patrick Murray

08/25/2011

Cement producers have faced a

significant rise in energy costs
with the introduction of dry-
process kilns, with a record
average consumption of 100-200
kWh per ton of cement, according
to the 2009 Cement Plant
Operations Handbook. This
complex challenge, coupled with
rising fuel and energy costs, has
prompted cement manufacturers
to implement energy management
programs to help reduce costs
while maintaining competitiveness
and increasing profits.

Many cement producers have

lowered energy costs up to 20%
by adopting a holistic approach to industrial energy management. This strategic process helps
customers identify cost-saving measures and evaluate the tools best suited to specific plant needs,
including:

Power and energy management systems

Variable frequency drives
Model predictive control systems
Energy assessments.

These tools help cement manufacturers: Poll Of The

Find and eliminate operating inefficiencies Week
Modify equipment and processes
Drive energy efficiency in product design Why would you use
Expand plant operations to include comprehensive energy management programs that will isolated signal
quickly provide measurable results and remarkable cost savings. conditioners to
connect your
This is a time of unprecedented complexity for cement producers. Managing production while analog I/O signals?
balancing supply, pricing, demand, process efficiencies, compliance with regulations, and other Iso l a t e gr o u n d
demands can be difficult. At the same time, the rising cost of energy, including water, air, gas, loops
electric and steam (WAGES) resources, compounds these challenges. E l i mi n a t e cro s st a l k
To l e r a t e v er y h i g h
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vo l t a g es
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As Paul Scheihing, technology manager, Industrial Technologies Program, U.S. Department of
Energy, explained,
The cost of purchasing the energy needed for production by an industrial facility
is viewed as managed input and typically receives significant attention, while the use of that energy
once it is inside the factory is often viewed as simply the cost of doing business. While not true in all
industrial facilities, experience has shown that unless the facility actively manages energy use and
has a documented plan for doing so, these facilities are significantly less energy efficient than they
could be. Without performance indicators that relate energy consumption to production output, it is
difficult to measure or document improvements in energy intensity.

For the first time in industrial applications, the automation control, optimization, and information
solutions necessary to conquer this energy challenge are in place or readily available to be applied
immediately to achieve measurable results.

Energy assessment

Prior to beginning any energy management program, conducting an energy assessment can help
companies identify a wide range of changes that they can make to help reduce consumption. These
can be simple, such as a walk-through of a building or facility to identify quick-hit opportunities, or
much more detailed efforts. Assessments can help establish the scope of an energy savings effort, Automation
define key metrics, and put resources in place to take a holistic view of energy for the entire Integrator Guide
organization. Search the online
Automation Integrator
Recommendations resulting from the assessment may include low-investment or no-investment
Guide to find more
behavioral modifications, such as shifting maintenance operations to nonpeak times, or may be
information on system
more involved, such as programming changes to equipment. Evaluation and prioritization of capital
integrators and the
improvement opportunities can also be included in the analyses.
Control System
Energy monitoring Integrators
Association.
After an assessment, the first step toward managing energy consumption is to gain awareness of
energy usage patterns and trends throughout the facility. Building management personnel can
leverage the facilitys metering infrastructure, including power monitoring devices, historical utility
bills, and prior energy or process assessments, to collect data about all the energy resources in
relation to equipment usage and environmental conditions. This process should include all points
where energy is used, from an industrial process to critical building systems.

This data is then logged and time-stamped in an energy historian

software program in order to establish trends or discrepancies in energy
quality and consumption, and to establish benchmarks for future
improvement. With this big-picture view of a facilitys overall WAGES
use, building management personnel can then identify and make
operational changes to help reduce energy consumption and related
costs, such as shedding loads or temporarily lowering power levels
when the facility is approaching peak use.

Energy metering

The first step is to meter the main incoming utilities and divide the plant
into energy allocation centers (EAC).

For electricity, producers might install main incoming utility meters on:

Generators
Plant substations
Kiln(s)
Motors over 200 hp
Major electrical consumers per EAC.

For fossil fuels, producers might use the following metering scheme:

Main incoming gas meter(s)

Kilns
Major gas consumers.

Production equipment monitoring also provides knowledge about how specific assets consume
energy. Identify useful data collection points across equipment and processes, and program the
information system to store and analyze that data.

Load profiling

Load-profiling exercises chart energy consumption patterns by measuring and recording energy
usage to identify peak demand periods, correlate consumption with facility activities and production
in real time, and forecast energy demand.

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 Page 3 of 5

Power quality monitoring

Gathering and reviewing power quality information can help identify power system anomalies and
calculations like the cost of a power outage.

Power quality monitoring measures, displays, records, trends, and alarms on power quality
parameters, such as:

Harmonics
Voltage excursions
Distribution system events.

With a log of historical data, building management staff can identify power quality issues, such as
voltage sags or harmonics that can cause damage to equipment inside the plant and cause power
factor problems on the energy grid. By knowing these risks, manufacturers can better protect their
equipment and avoid incurring penalty fees from utility companies.

Improve efficiency

Next, cement producers can implement control strategies like emergency load-shedding, cost
allocation, and demand management to help improve energy efficiency throughout the plant.

Emergency load-shedding

To justify the cost of an emergency load-shedding system, simply identify what a power outage
would cost in lost production, using data collected during the assessments conducted earlier. Most
cement producers find that an emergency load-shedding solution will pay for itself in one or two
outages.

Emergency load-shedding applies to sites with generation or multiple utility sources and helps
producers:

Protect generators from dangerous, damaging overloads

Maintain critical loads during outages
Optimize sources and critical loads
Eliminate the costs associated with damaged equipment and downtime.

Energy consumption, cost allocation, shadow billing

By reviewing energy usage data collected previously, cement producers can reveal where energy
dollars are consumed, and in what proportion. This can help allocate costs by department, process,
or facility; verify the accuracy of utility bills through
shadow billing; and evaluate alternate energy
rates and contracts.

Demand management

A demand management system limits energy demand through load shedding and peak shaving
strategies. It helps reduce demand charges and manage real-time power purchases or to minimize
load during a curtailment period.

For example, a steel mill was using 90,000

MWh of electrical energy per month, at a cost
of $2.7 million each year. By replacing the
facilitys unreliable demand management
system and updating its control algorithms to
more efficiently shed loads, improve power
factor, and reduce voltage sags, the
$300,000 system experienced a complete
payback in five months. In addition, the
company is enjoying an ongoing savings of
$70,000 per month from reduced damage
levels.

Motor management

Nearly 70% of all electricity used in industry is consumed by some type of motor-driven system. In
a 10-year life cycle, a motor could accumulate energy costs amounting to 100 times its original
purchase value.

However, cement producers can significantly reduce motor energy usage by implementing
intelligent motor control solutions, such as variable frequency drives (VFDs).

In cement plants, VFDs are used to save energy and control process parameters, and retention
times in applications with variable torque characteristics such as gas flow and fluid flow or in
constant torque applications such as material handling and grinding equipment. Drives also are used
to power roller mills for grinding different blaine of slag for cement, and for starting and running
multiple roller mills, ball mills, and overland conveyors.

A China-based cement plant used VFDs to significantly reduce its energy consumption in its dry-
process kilns, responsible for production of 1.4 million tons of cement each year. Traditional damper
control systems used a fixed amount of energy, so fans at the plant always ran at full capacity even
when the facility wasnt producing productwasting energy and causing unnecessary wear on the
equipment. By using variable frequency drives to automate the speed control of its kiln head
exhaust fan, kiln main electric fan, high-temperature fan, coal mill exhaust fan, and kiln tail exhaust
fans, the system now only uses the amount of energy necessary to produce the required amount of
airflow. As a result, the company reduced specific energy consumption by 10%, generating annual
savings of $124,000.

Typical VFD applications in a cement plant include:

Induced draft/forced draft fans

Kiln drives
Mill drives
Material handling systems
Centrifugal pumps and fans
Compressor controls.

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Power factor

Power factor (PF) measures how well cement producers use the power they draw from the grid. A
PF of one is equivalent to 100% efficiency; in other words, all the power drawn is used. A PF of zero
means there is an entirely reactive power flow.

To improve power factor, companies can implement of VFDs, use synchronous motors (such motors
inherently have a PF of one), or install power factor correction capacitors. Power factor correction
capacitors are used to improve the poor power factor of induction motors.

Optimize efficiency

Once cement producers have addressed opportunities for improved efficiency, the next step is to
examine opportunities for optimizing the entire process. Indeed, controlling a major process unit
effectively usually means dealing with multivariable systems, but it is extremely unlikely that
treating each control loop independently will provide optimal control since in most situations, the
control action of one loop affects the other loops. Model predictive control (MPC) technology, a
multivariable control algorithm, can provide:

An internal dynamic model of the process that is subject to process constraints and based on
a fixed frequency cycle
A history of past control moves to determine deviations
An optimization cost function over the prediction horizon to calculate the optimum control
moves and control future behavior.

MPC technology allows the controller to receive information about the current operating condition of
the process, then uses a model to predict process response to a sequence of future moves in
manipulated inputs over a specified timeline, or
prediction horizon. Next, an optimal control
problem, solved online, determines the best sequence of future moves in multiple manipulated
variables to minimize a particular objective function while obeying various process constraints. A
fraction of the resulting control trajectory is then applied to the process and new process
measurements reflecting modified operating conditions are obtained, allowing comparison of
process outputs to desired reference trajectories. With this new information, the system repeats the
optimization and control move process.

MPC systems can deliver optimization across key areas of the production process through
applications for raw material preparation, including pyro-processing, cement grinding, and material
blending. Energy savings can be generated by optimizing the combustion process, controlling
temperature profiles, optimizing the heat recuperation process, and others. On average, MPC
systems allow cement plants to reduce their energy consumption by 3% to 5%, as well as provide
better product quality and capacity improvements.

Energy management profit

Armed with optimized production information, manufacturers can then project, in advance, how
much energy will be required for similar loads or batches. Cement producers can then include
energy requirements in resource planning and scheduling decisions in the same way they consider
the availability of raw materials or other inputs on the bill of materials.

Empirically tying WAGES consumption requirements to the bill of materials allows a plant manager
or production scheduling manager to make proactive production decisions and better manage
energy investments in a way that will generate a greater return. For example, by knowing that
certain cement batches require more natural resources, managers can move those batches outside
peak windows.

At this point in the industrial energy management process, energy and its associated greenhouse
gas emissions are no longer fixed allocations that are simply part of unavoidable overhead.
Manufacturers who add WAGES resources to the bill of materials can actively manage it as an input
to achieve higher profitability. In addition, this unit-level energy consumption information becomes
valuable input to sustainability scorecards and other reporting mechanisms, allowing companies to
better optimize their full supply chain to enhance sustainability and energy programs.

For example, in the cement factory of the future, a manufacturer might wish to enhance operations
to support an ideal
sustainability score. The company might choose a production facility based on
the price of slurry, and on the potential carbon or energy footprint of shipping the raw materials to
the facility. Additionally, the transportation routes for the outbound product can be optimized to
account for weather factors that might impact the energy needed to store the product.

Holistic energy management

Manufacturers who have adopted this holistic approach to energy management have been able to
do so by leveraging existing automation and power system investments to make more of their
WAGES resources. Using intelligent automation solutions to get the big picture of energy use in a
cement plant helps to identify where operational changes can be made to reduce energy
consumption and costs.

Key concept: Affinity laws a little less speed, a lot less energy

VFDs employ affinity laws to reduce energy use by using the minimum amount required by the
motor application. For example, in centrifugal applications such as fans and pumps, a reduction in
speed translates to a proportional reduction in flow (head pressure varies as the square of speed). A
reduction in speed also translates into a reduction in energy (power varies as the cube of speed).
Therefore, a flow rate of 50% equates to a power requirement of only 12.5%. In other words, a fan
speed of 80% equates to a 50% reduction in energy.

Typical audit scope and timeline

Assessment Audit

roximate time to complete 2-3 days 2-3 weeks

saving project x x
tification

ties usage review x x

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 Page 5 of 5

iled utilities x
lysis

iled quotations for x

ainability projects

rn on investment calculation x
rojects

ritization of projects x

Courtesy: Rockwell Automation

- Patrick Murray is manager of industry sales, Rockwell Automation. Edited by Mark T. Hoske, CFE
Media, Control Engineering, www.controleng.com.

www.rockwellautomation.com

www.controleng.com/channels/sustainable-engineering.html

References

Phil Kaufman, White Paper:
Industrial Energy Optimization: Managing Energy Consumption for
Higher Profitability, pub. SUST-WP002B-EN-P, January 2011.

Philip A. Alsop, PhD, Hung Chen, PhD, and Herman Tseng, PE. The Cement Plant Operations
Handbook, Fifth Edition, October 2007.

Craig Resnick,
Sustainable Production Imperatives and Opportunities from Rockwell Automation,
ARC Advisory Group, ARC View, May 2009.

George Seggewiss, PEng, Nathan Schacter, PEng, Greg Obermeyer, PEng, and Gary Bankay,

Considerations for Implementing MV Drives in a Cement Plant, IEEE Conference 2008.

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