Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494

www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Energy balance and cogeneration for a cement plant

Shaleen Khurana, Rangan Banerjee *, Uday Gaitonde
Indian Institute of Technology, Energy Systems Engineering, IIT Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India
Received 25 May 2001; received in revised form 3 November 2001; accepted 19 November 2001

Abstract
The cement industry is an energy intensive industry consuming about 4 GJ per tonne of cement pro-
duced. A thermodynamic analysis for cogeneration using the waste heat streams is not easily available.
Data from a working 1 Mt per annum plant in India is used to obtain an energy balance for the system and
a Sankey diagram is drawn. It is found that about 35% of the input energy is being lost with the waste heat
streams. A steam cycle is selected to recover the heat from the streams using a waste heat recovery steam
generator and it is estimated that about 4.4 MW of electricity can be generated. This represents about 30%
of the electricity requirement of the plant and a 10% improvement in the primary energy efficiency of the
plant. The payback period for the system is found to be within two years. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All
rights reserved.

Keywords: Cement; Energy balance; Waste heat recovery; Cogeneration

1. Introduction

The cement industry is an energy intensive industry. In India the industry accounts for 10.3% of
total fuel consumption in the manufacturing sector [1]. The energy costs account for about 26% of
the manufacturing cost of cement [2]. In terms of the primary energy usage about 25% of the input
energy is electricity while 75% is thermal energy [1]. The specific energy consumption varies from
about 3.40 GJ/t for the dry process to about 5.29 GJ/t for the wet process. The best practice
specific energy consumption in India is 3.06 GJ/t while in some countries of the world it is lower
than 2.95 GJ/t [1,3]. The higher specific energy consumption in India is partly due to the harder
raw material and the poor quality of the fuel. Waste heat recovery from the hot gases in the
system has been recognized as a potential option to improve energy efficiency [4]. However there

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91-22-576-7883; fax: +91-22-572-6875.
E-mail addresses: rangan@me.iitb.ac.in, rangan@me.iitb.ernet.in (R. Banerjee).

1359-4311/02/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 1 3 5 9 - 4 3 1 1 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 1 2 8 - 4
486 S. Khurana et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494

are few detailed thermodynamic analyses of operating cement plants that evaluate the option of
waste heat recovery. This paper builds up an energy balance for an operating plant and estimates
the power that can be generated from the waste heat streams.
The process of manufacture of cement can be divided into three basic steps, preparation of raw
materials, pyroprocessing to produce clinker, and grinding and blending clinker with other prod-
ucts to make cement. The raw materials obtained from the quarry are crushed, ground and mixed
as a slurry in the wet process and a powder in the dry process. This mixture is then fed into a
calciner and preheater before being fed into the kiln, for pyroprocessing (clinker formation). The
kiln reaches temperatures greater than 1450 °C [1]. The clinker nodules produced and any ad-
ditives are then ground to the desired fineness in the cement grinder. Pyroprocessing consumes
99% of the fuel energy while electricity is mainly used to operate both raw material (33%) and
clinker (38%) crushing and grinding equipment. Pyroprocessing requires another 22% of the
electricity hence it is the most energy intensive step of the production process [1].

2. System definition and data source

The cement plant considered is Maihar Cement––Unit 2, Madhya Pradesh, India. A schematic
of the plant (Fig. 1) shows the flow of various streams and the components of the plant. The plant
runs on dry process with a five stage suspension preheater and an inline calciner. The production
capacity is 3800 tonne per day. The specific energy consumption for the plant is 3.7 GJ per tonne

Fig. 1. Schematic of the Maihar cement plant.

 S. Khurana et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494 487

of clinker and 87 kW h (0.31 GJ) of electricity per tonne of cement. Since it is one of the more
efficient plants in the country [5] it is suitable as a reference case for study.
The system under consideration for the energy balance is enclosed in the rectangular box in Fig.
1. It is the pyroprocessing unit that includes the preheater, the calciner, the kiln and the clinker
cooler. The streams into the system are the raw material, the air into the cooler and the coal fired
into the kiln and the calciner. The streams leaving the system are clinker out from the cooler, the
exhaust gases from the preheater and the hot air out from the cooler. The system along with all
the data available is summarized in Fig. 2. The composition of coal into the system and clinker
out of the system is represented in Figs. 3 and 4 while the composition of the preheater exhaust is
given in Table 1.

Fig. 2. Data available for the streams entering the system.

Fig. 3. Composition of coal.

488 S. Khurana et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494

Fig. 4. Composition of clinker.

Table 1
Composition of preheater exhaust
Species %
CO2 38
N2 57
O2 5

3. Mass balance

The stream data obtained from the plant is used to perform a mass balance over the system.
The following reactions are known to occur in the system:
Calcination reactions
CaCO3 ! CaO þ CO2

MgCO3 ! MgO þ CO2

Assuming complete combustion of coal
C þ O2 ! CO2

4H þ O2 ! 2H2 O

S þ O2 ! SO2
Stoichiometric calculations are used to arrive at the flow rate of the remaining streams. The
composition of preheater exhaust is known and a species balance on nitrogen, oxygen and carbon
dioxide gives the flow rate of the exhaust gases. The composition and the flow rate of the raw feed
 S. Khurana et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494 489

Fig. 5. Mass flow rates of different streams into the system.

are estimated from the clinker composition and the reactions. The final flow rates of the different
streams are summarized in Fig. 5.

4. Energy balance

An enthalpy balance for the system is drawn, taking the reference enthalpy to be 0 kJ/kg at 0 °C,
1 atm. The specific enthalpy of various components is obtained from Peray [6]. The temperatures
of the streams are measured and the calorific value of coal is obtained from the plant data (Fig. 2).
The energy required for the reaction has been estimated using the correlations given in the
handbook [6]. The input energy with various streams is calculated per kg clinker produced. The
overall energy balance is summarized in Table 2.
A component wise energy balance is similarly drawn using the information about the degree of
calcination. The material entering the calciner is 30% calcined and the material leaving the cal-
ciner is 96% calcined [5]. It is assumed that the calcination energy is uniformly distributed over the
temperature range to calculate the calcinations energy in each component. It is also assumed that

Table 2
Summary of the enthalpy
Stream Flow rate Specific heat Temperature Enthalpy
(kg/kg clinker) (kJ/kg K) (°C) (kJ/kg clinker)
Entering the system
Raw feed 1.56 0.9 50 66
Ambient air 2.98 1.0 30 89
Coal 0.15 0.9 50 7
Combustion of coal Net calorific value ¼ 23 800 kJ/kg coal 3611
Total 3773
Leaving the system
Clinker 1.00 0.8 100 82
Preheater exhaust 2.27 1.0 280 636
Hot air from cooler 1.42 1.0 400 568
Reaction energy 1850
Total 3136
490 S. Khurana et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494

Fig. 6. Sankey diagram for the system.

the coal entering the calciner is fully combusted in the calciner and that entering the kiln is
combusted in the kiln.
The energy balance for the entire system is summarized as a Sankey diagram (Fig. 6). The
values are indicated as a percent of the total energy released from the combustion of coal in the
calciner as well as the kiln. The energy released on combustion of coal is about 3600 kJ/kg clinker.
It is observed in the enthalpy flow diagram that there is a good agreement between the overall
energy input to the system and out of the system with an inconsistency of about 600 kJ/kg clinker
that amounts to about 15% of the input energy. Considering the nature of the data sources and
the simplifications made, the energy balance can be said to be in good agreement. Some of the
sources of error that have not been considered are the radiation losses predominantly from the
kiln shell, the energy lost with the dust leaving with the different streams.
A parameter that is used to evaluate the performance of the system is the primary energy
efficiency, defined as
Qu þ W =gp
gprimary ¼
Q
where Qu is the energy used up for the reaction, W is the power generated, gp is the efficiency of a
conventional power plant and is assumed to be 35% while Q is the thermal energy input.
With the current methodology of manufacture, the primary efficiency of the process is about
50% and the remaining 35% of the energy is lost with the flue gases and the hot air, and energy
recovery from these streams would improve the overall efficiency of the system. The energy
leaving the system with the two streams can be calculated as the ratio of the enthalpy carried with
the exhaust stream HExhaust and the enthalpy leaving with the hot air HAir to the enthalpy entering
the system from the combustion of coal Q.
HExhaust
Energy carried with the preheater exhaust stream ¼ ¼ 18%
Q
 S. Khurana et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494 491

HAir
Energy carried with the hot air from the cooler ¼ ¼ 16%
Q
The temperature to which the exhaust gas gets cooled in the preheater is limited by the number
of cyclones. Most modern plants have five cyclones due to structural limitations. It is seen that the
preheater system has a high energy efficiency and there are no significant losses. The temperature
of flue gas into the preheater is 900 °C and the material temperature upon heat exchange is about
800 °C, which indicates that the process is thermodynamically efficient. The only loss in from the
preheater is in form of exhaust gases (18%). It has been suggested that the process be modified for
enhanced waste heat recovery by replacing the preheater system with the waste heat recovery
system [8], however considering the process specifications and the high efficiency, it is desirable to
look at the option of recovering heat from the existing streams rather than modify the system.
Exergy analyses on the preheater cyclones have indicated that the second law efficiency of the
preheater is high [9], hence it is not proposed to make modifications on the preheater instead a
retrofit to the existing components is suggested.

5. Power generation

The two waste heat streams are available for power generation and it is proposed that a waste
heat recovery steam generator (WHRSG) be used to generate steam that is passed through a
steam turbine to generate power. A schematic is shown in Fig. 7. The nature of the two streams is

Fig. 7. Schematic for the power generation system.

492 S. Khurana et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494

Fig. 8. Temperature–enthalpy diagram for the HRSG.

different, the preheater exhaust is heavily dust laden (70 g/Nm3 ) hence separate exchangers should
be designed for the two streams.
Based on the temperature of the streams a steam cycle is selected. A pinch point (minimum
approach temperature) of 20 °C is taken. The steam parameters are taken as 10 bar saturated at
the steam turbine inlet. The condenser temperature is selected at 50 °C as the ambient temperature
reaches higher than 40 °C in the summer months. The streams in the WHRSG are represented on
a temperature enthalpy diagram in Fig. 8. From the stream temperature it is seen that exchangers
in parallel should be used for higher recovery as compared to a series configuration for the two
streams.
The preheater exhaust stream gets cooled to 178 °C while the hot air stream gets cooled to
140 °C. Both these stream temperatures are above the acid dew point of the streams. The power
generated for the system is about 100 kJ/kg clinker which amounts to 4.4 MW with a production
rate of 3800 tonne per day. This amounts to about 30% of the total power requirement of the
plant.
The design of a WHRSG for the gas streams needs to consider that the flue gases are heavily
dust laden. Prediction of the performance of the heat exchanger would require an estimation of
the fouling characteristics of the streams. The dust is also likely to cause abrasion particularly at
the bends and needs to be considered while design. Prediction of the fouling characteristics of the
dust laden gases requires experimentation. Since the power recoverable is significant, a project to
predict the fouling behavior is suggested. Theoretical models for prediction of deposition of dust
from streams can be used for a first estimate of the fouling characteristics.
The implementation of the system would require special consideration of the layout of the
system, and might pose a problem in some of the older plants that have undergone a number of
structural changes. The primary energy efficiency of the cement plant with the cogeneration
system is 60% which indicates an improvement of 10%. The cost of electricity supplied by the
electricity board is about Rs. 4.5 (US$ 0.096) per kWh [7] hence for the plant the savings from the
recovered energy amount to around Rs. 16 crores (US$ 3.4 million) per annum for a working of
330 days in an year, assuming a shutdown of about 5 days for system maintenance due to ex-
cessive fouling caused by the dust, every three months. The first cost estimate for the system is
about Rs. 5 crores per MW and taking into account the operating costs, the payback period for
the system is estimated within 2 years.
 S. Khurana et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494 493

The production of cement in India is about 110 Mt per annum, extrapolating the results about
450 MW of power can be generated from the various plants in India. A large number of plants in
the country are relatively inefficient when compared with the plant considered with a higher
temperature of the exhaust gases, hence it is expected that the power generated will be higher than
estimated.
One of the prime considerations in the design of the system has been to make it a retrofit and
using the gas streams only down stream of the process and the operation of the kiln, calciner and
preheater stays unaffected. This will ensure easier acceptability of the option and if required a shut
down of the cogeneration system can be taken without affecting the cement plant output.

6. Conclusion

The data collected from a 1 Mt per annum working cement plant was used to arrive at an
energy balance for the pyroprocessing unit. The Sankey diagram revealed that the efficiency of the
preheater and calciner units is high. The overall thermal efficiency of the plant was found to be
50% and is close to the best practice with the current technological limitations. The waste heat was
estimated at 35% of the energy input. A retrofit steam cycle was selected and for the considered
plant about 4.4 MW of power can be generated from the waste heat streams. This represented an
improvement of about 10% in terms of primary energy efficiency of the plant. Around 30% of the
energy requirement of the plant can thus be met from the cogeneration system. Extrapolating to
the cement production in India this offers a potential of about 450 MW and is an economically
viable option for cement plants.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Maihar Cement, and Mr. R.M. Shah,
Technical Advisor, Maihar Cement.

References

[1] S. Katja, S. Jayant, India’s Cement Industry: Energy Efficiency and Carbon Emissions, Report number LBNL-
41842, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US. http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/ies/suni6/industry/41842.pdf.
[2] Sector Report on the Cement Industry. http://www.indiainfoline.com/sect/ceme/ch03a.html.
[3] L. Price, E. Worrell, N. Martin, B. Lehman, J. Sinton, China’s Industrial Sector in an International Context,
Proceedings of the Workshop on ‘‘Learning from International Best Practice Energy Policies in the Industrial
Sector’’, Beijing, China, 22–23 May 2000. http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/ies/suni6/industry/46273.pdf.
[4] K. Kamal, Energy Efficiency Improvement in the Cement Industry, presented at the seminar on Energy Efficiency,
January 1997, organised by ASSOCHAM, India and RMA, USA.
[5] Log sheets at Maihar Cement, Unit 2, Madhya Pradesh, India.
[6] K.E. Peray, Cement Manufacturers Handbook, Chemical Publishing Company, New York, 1979.
[7] Survey of Industrial Environmental Report on Cement Industry, TERI. http://www.cleantechinitiative.com/cti/
cement-ch.htm.
494 S. Khurana et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 485–494

[8] J.M. Chawla, Waste heat recovery from flue gases with substantial dust load, Chem. Eng. Process. 38 (4–6) (1999)
365–371.
[9] P.P.A.J. Schijndel, F.J.J.G. van Janssen, G. Mrema, I.L. Greeff, Exergy analysis and environmental impact
assessment of cement production: Tanzanian and South African case studies, in: G.G. Hirs (Ed.), Proceedings ECOS
2000, Eurotherm Seminar 65, Part 3, 5–7 July 2000, pp. 1425–1436. http://www.chem.tue.nl/cmt/ecos2000.pdf.