CEMENT MANUFACTURING

PROCESSES

The production of cement takes place with several steps:

Extraction of Raw Materials

Quarrying of limestone and shale
Dredging the ocean floor for shells
Digging for clay and marl
Crushing
Blending and Proportioning of Raw Materials
Pre-Blending Stockpile (Stacker/Reclaimer)
Mill feed bins and weigh feeders and
Fine grinding
Burning
Finish grinding
Packaging and/or shipping

Extraction of Raw Materials

Quarrying of limestone and shale is accomplished by using explosives to blast the rocks
from the ground. After blasting, huge power shovels are used to load dump trucks or
small railroad cars for transportation to the cement plant, which is usually nearby.

The ocean floor is dredged to obtain the shells, while clay and marl are dug out of the
ground with power shovels. All of the raw materials are transported to the plant.

Crushing
After the raw materials have been transported to the plant, the limestone and shale
which have been blasted out of the quarry must be crushed into smaller pieces. Some
of the pieces, when blasted out, are quite large. The pieces are then dumped into
primary crushers which reduce them to the size of a softball. The pieces are carried by
conveyors to secondary crushers which crush the rocks into fragments usually no larger
than 3/4 inch across.

The limestone is crushed in the first crusher

called a jaw crusher

and then fed
into the

second crusher called an

impact crusher.. The raw mix is fed into a circular storage unit
called raw mix storage.

Usually we choose jaw

crusher for

limestone crushing since jaw crusher is

of easy principle, convenient maintenance and low cost. However, if the whole cement
mining scale is of large size, we usually choose cone crusher or impact crusher to assist
jaw crusher and to be secondary or tertiary cement crusher machine
 JAW CRUSHER IMPACT CRUSHER

CONE CRUSHER

Limestone jaw crusher is the most widely used limestone crushing plant. Jaw crusher
can be used both in two stage crushing process and three stage crushing process. If
you only choose jaw crushers as the limestone crushers in two stage crushing process,
then you will reduce the cost as well as improve the capacity.

Limestone impact crusher plays an important role in two stage limestone crushing
process. As impact crusher usually produce products with better shapes. The outlets of
impact crusher are usually more even and cubical particles.

Limestone cone crusher is usually used when customers have special requirements on
fineness of final products. Cone crusher is the excellent secondary and tertiary crushing
plants which can resize limestone into powder size products.

Impact crusher and cone crusher are often used as secondary crushing equipment.
Some types of cone crushers are especially suitable for crushing extra high hard raw-
material. As we all know that limestone is medium hard stone, if you want to launch a
small scale or medium scale limestone crusher cement plant, youd better choose
impact crusher as the secondary crushing equipment. But if you want to have a large
scale limestone crusher plant, cone crusher is the best choice.

Blending and Proportioning of Raw Materials

Computers are used to have precise calculations and monitoring of the right mix. Each
of the raw materials is separated and kept in silos where it later will be added in specific
amounts according to the type of cement being produced.

After the rock is crushed, plant chemists analyze the rock and raw materials to
determine their mineral content. The chemists also determine the proportions of each
raw material to utilize in order to obtain a uniform cement product. The various raw
materials are then mixed in proper proportions and prepared for fine grinding.

The chief chemical constituents of Portland cement are as follows:

Chemical Composition Percentage

Lime (CaO) 60 to 67%

Silica (SiO2) 17 to 25%

Alumina (Al2O3) 3 to 8%

Iron oxide (Fe2O3) 0.5 to 6%

Magnesia (MgO) 0.1 to 4%

Raw materials used in the manufacture of Portland cement (percentage

composition)

Raw Material CaO SiO2 Al2O3 Fe2O3 MgO loss on ignition

limestone 52 3 1 0.5 0.5 42
chalk 54 1 0.5 0.2 0.3 43
cement rock 43 11 3 1 2 36
clay 1 57 16 7 1 14
slag 42 34 15 1 4 0
Homogenization Strategy in the Cement Industry

Pre-Blending Stockpile

The Pre-Blending Stockpile is sometimes used as a single-

component homogenizing system or to mix and
homogenize several components. In this case, A, B and C
are proportionally fed and blended in the Pre-Blending
Stockpile. Even the best blending system needs a
clear strategy for blending and homogenizing,
especially for a multi-component system as in this
example.

Establish the target chemistry of the Pre-

Blending Stockpile
Establish the regulated proportioning of the raw material
components (A/B/C ratio) based on the target chemistry for the pile.
Stacker and Reclamer

Provide a metering arrangement for the materials A, B and C from hoppers or

stockpiles
Ideally an on-line analyzer in the stacker belt establishes continuous analysis and
cumulative composition of the pile
Continuous proportioning and proper stacking procedures should ensure that
each material is spread throughout the length of the stockpile
Provide a sampling and analyzing system for the reclaimed material

Mill Feed Bins

The battery of feed bins for the raw mill consists of one large bin for the blended
material from the pre-blending store, two or three smaller bins for
materials that need to be added in small proportions, and one for
the sweetener. The weigh feeder under each bin
regulates the proportioning of each material necessary to
reach the raw mix design. In this example, there are
three bins, one for the blended material from the
stockpile (A,B C mixed in the desired ratio), one bin for D, and
one bin for E. The three weigh feeders meter the material in the
desired ratio to the mill feed belt conveyor. Any section on the belt
should theoretically contain the average kiln feed
composition. Some strategic steps to be considered are listed below:
 The single-most important consideration is to minimize the deviation in the
composition. This is done by installing an on-line analyzer on the mill feed belt,
which continuously monitors the composition and regulates the weigh feeders to
adjust to the target kiln feed chemistry.
The milling process itself does not change the mean composition, but helps the
homogenization.

Fine Grinding
When the raw materials have been blended, they must be ground into a fine powder. In
this process, the blended raw materials are moved into the grinding mill. The purpose of
grinding the raw materials is to produce a fine particle-sized material to feed the kiln that
will allow proper burning or clinkerization to take place.

Vertical roller mill

In a Vertical roller mill, the interparticle comminution takes place in a material filled gap
between the rotating table and the grinding rollers. The mill feed is charged to the center
of the table and moves, affected by centrifugal forces and friction, toward the tables
edge. On its way, it is nipped by two, three, four, or six conical rollers installed at the
outside rim of the table. The rollers are attached to hydraulic cylinders that provide the
grinding force for comminution of the material. The ground particles leave with the
airstream and are taken up by the separator incorporated into the casing of the mill. The
fine product reports to the mill discharge, and the coarse reject of the separator falls
back onto the table as a recirculating load.

Burning
Burning the
blended
materials is the key in the

process
of

making

cement. The wet or dry mix is fed into the kiln, which is one of the largest pieces of
moving machinery in the industry. It is generally twelve feet or more in diameter and 500
feet or more in length, made of steel and lined with firebrick.

Rawmix is fed in at the upper end, and the rotation of the kiln causes it gradually to
move downhill to the other end of the kiln. At the other end fuel, in the form of gas, oil, or
pulverized solid fuel, is blown in through the "burner pipe", producing a large concentric
flame in the lower part of the kiln tube.

Process Involved in Kiln

Wet process, or
Dry process

The wet process of fine grinding is the older process, having been used in Europe prior
to the manufacture of cement in the United States. This process is used more often
when clay and marl, which are very moist, are included in the composition of the
cement. In the wet process, the blended raw materials are moved into ball or tube mills
which are cylindrical rotating drums which contain steel balls. These steel balls grind
the raw materials into smaller fragments of up to 200 of an inch. As the grinding is done,
water is added until a slurry (thin mud) forms, and the slurry is stored in open tanks
where additional mixing is done. Some of the water may be removed from the slurry
before it is burned, or the slurry may be sent to the kiln as is and the water evaporated
during the burning.

Wet process kilns

A wet process kiln may be up to 200m long and

6m in diameter. It has to be long because a lot
of water has to be evaporated and the process
of heat transfer is not very efficient.

Dry process kilns

In a modern works, the blended raw material

enters the kiln via the pre-heater tower. Here,
hot gases from the kiln, and probably the
cooled clinker at the far end of the kiln, are
used to heat the raw meal. As a result, the raw
meal is already hot before it enters the kiln.
The clinker is made by heating in a rotary kiln at high temperature a homogeneous
mixture of raw materials. The products of the chemical reaction aggregate together at
their sintering temperature, about 1,450 C. Clinker is discharged red-hot from the lower
end of the kiln and generally is brought down to handling temperature in various types
of coolers. The heated air from the coolers is returned to the kilns, a process that saves
fuel and increases burning efficiency. This causes chemical and physical changes to the
raw materials and they come out of the furnace as large, glassy, red-hot cinders called
"clinker".

Finish Grinding
The cooled clinker is mixed with a small amount of gypsum, which will help regulate the
setting time when the cement is mixed with other materials and becomes concrete.
Here again there are primary and secondary grinders. The primary grinders leave the
clinker, ground to the fineness of sand, and the secondary grinders leave the clinker
ground to the fineness of flour, which is the final product ready for marketing.

BALL MILL

When the barrel body rotates and then produces centrifugal force, at this time, the steel
ball is carried to a certain height and falls to make the material grinding and striking. The
clinker is cooled and ground into a fine gray powder. A small amount of gypsum is also
added during the final grinding. It is now the finished product. So cement grinding will
directly influence the products quality.
AIR CLASSIFIER

Air Classifying Mill is used for pulverizing dry materials into different particle size
fractions by their size, mass or shape also modify a particle size distribution.

PACKAGING/SHIPPING
The final product is shipped either in
bulk (ships, barges, tanker trucks,
railroad cars, etc.) or in strong paper bags
which are filled by machine. In the United
States, one bag of Portland cement contains 94
pounds of cement, and a barrel weighs four times
that amount, or 376 pounds. In Canada, one bag
weighs 87 1/2 pounds and a barrel weighs 350 pounds.

Masonry cement bags contain only seventy pounds of cement.

When cement is shipped, the shipping documents may include sack weights. This
must be verified by the auditor since only the cement is taxable. Sack weights must be
excluded.