IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO.
5, SEPTEMBER 2003
Modeling and Control of Cement Grinding Processes
Michaël Boulvin, Alain Vande Wouwer, Member, IEEE, Renato Lepore, Christine Renotte, and Marcel Remy
Abstract—In this study, a nonlinear dynamic model of a ce-
ment grinding process, including a ball mill and an air separator
in closed loop, is developed. This gray-box model consists of a set
of algebraic and partial differential equations containing a set of
unknown parameters. The selection of a model parametrization,
the design of experiments, the estimation of unknown parameters
from experimental data, and the model validation are discussed.
Based on the resulting model, a dynamic simulator can be devel-
oped, which appears as a useful tool to analyze the process behavior
and to understand the origin of instabilities observed in real-life op-
erations. As a result, a cascaded control structure for regulating the
mill flow rate, and a proportional integral controller for regulating
the cement fineness are designed. Experimental data demonstrate
the effectiveness of this control scheme. Alternatively, if on line
measurements of the recirculated flow rate are available, a feed-
forward control of the feed flow rate is described, which ensures a
better decoupling of mass flow rate and fineness regulation.
Index Terms—Cement industry, distributed parameter systems,
parameter estimation, process control.
I. INTRODUCTION
G RINDING processes are particularly energy-consuming.
In the cement industry, the energy consumption associ-
ated to grinding raw materials and clinker represents approx-
imately 75% of the cement production costs. Moreover, only
2%–20% of the energy supplied to the grinders are effectively
used in the fragmentation process, the rest being dissipated es-
sentially into heat (see [1] for a more detailed discussion).
The performance of a grinding process can be influenced at
two distinct levels. At first, significant improvements can be
achieved by a careful design of the grinding mill (e.g., number
and size of the compartments, internal lining, etc.) and the air
separator (e.g., registers, velocity of the fan, etc.), and by the
proper selection of grinding media (i.e., load and size distribu-
tion of the balls). Then, based on these design parameters, the
development of control schemes ensuring stable process oper-
ations and efficient regulation of the cement quality is required
in order to avoid product downgrading or rejection.
Grinding circuits are complex processes characterized by a
number of design parameters and variables such as grindability
of the raw materials, particle size distribution, material hold-up,
and rotational speed of the mill, etc. The general lack of sensors
in industrial plants makes the investigation of the several ma-
terial grinding and transportation mechanisms inside the mill
particularly delicate, or even impossible. The complexity of the
Manuscript received November 1, 2001. Manuscript received in final form
July 16, 2002. Recommended by Associate Editor Dochain. The work of M.
Boulvin was supported by a Research Grant from Fonds pour la Formation à la
Recherche dans l’Industrie et dans l’Agriculture (FRIA).
The authors are with the Control Department of the Faculté Polytechnique de
Mons, 7000 Mons, Belgium (e-mail: Alain.Vandewouwer@fpms.ac.be).
R. Lepore is with CBR (Division Ciment, Bassin Ouest), Belgium.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2003.816406
1063-6536/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
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715
system and the difficulty to observe internal phenomena do not
allow a thorough knowledge of the process.
In an attempt to overcome these difficulties, numerous mod-
eling studies of grinding processes have been carried out in
the last decades, e.g., the lumped parameter models proposed
by Austin et al. [2] and Rogers [3] and the distributed param-
eter models developed by Horst [4] and Mika [5]. Based on
these previous works, the authors reported in [6] on the devel-
opment of a simplified, linear distributed parameter model of an
industrial grinding circuit. This model allowed simple control
schemes described in the literature to be evaluated in simula-
tion. However, the model linearity drastically limited this study
to small excursions from a specified operating point.
The objective of the current paper is threefold.
First, a nonlinear distributed parameter model of an industrial
cement grinding process (CBR company, Belgium), including a
ball mill and an air separator in closed loop, is developed. Two
essential nonlinearities are considered. The first one is related
to the effect of the material hold-up of the mill on the efficiency
of the fragmentation process. The second one expresses the fact
that the separation curve is influenced by the inlet flow rate to
the air separator. These two nonlinearities appear as key factors
in the stability analysis of the closed-loop grinding process.
Second, particular attention is paid to the parameter estima-
tion problem. Indeed, the proposed gray-box model, which con-
sists of a set of algebraic and partial differential equations, con-
tains a set of unknown parameters which have to be estimated
from experimental data. Common practice is to estimate the sev-
eral parameters characterizing the breakage laws of a specific
material from laboratory-scale experimental tests [2]. These ex-
periments are particularly time-consuming, and their transposi-
tion to full-scale industrial plants is delicate. Here, a simplified
parametrization of the breakage laws is proposed, and the re-
sulting set of unknown parameters is estimated from a limited
number of experiments performed on the industrial plant.
Third, a simple cascaded control structure is elaborated,
which allows the process to be stabilized close to an optimum
operating point. This control scheme is implemented on the real
plant, and its effectiveness is demonstrated with experimental
results. Finally, a slightly more complex structure is proposed,
which incorporates a feedforward action based on on line
measurements of the recirculated flow rate. The performance
of these alternative control schemes are compared in simulation
in the case of disturbances in the material grindability (material
grindability is an important characteristic, which can be signif-
icantly affected by manufacturing and storage conditions).
This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the
industrial process and discusses the model equations of the ball
mill and the air separator. Section III deals with experiment de-
sign and parameter estimation. In Section IV, the model is used
716 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003
Fig. 1. Industrial grinding circuit.
to investigate the process behavior and stability. Section V is
dedicated to the design and comparison of alternative control
structures. Finally, Section VI is devoted to concluding remarks.
II. PROCESS DESCRIPTION AND MODELING
Fig. 1 illustrates a two-compartment ball mill in closed loop
with an air separator. The feed flow , made up of clinker and
other raw material components, enters the rotating mill where it
is ground by steel balls. The mill product is transported by
an elevator into the separator where, depending on adjustable
registers, it is subdivided into a flow of fine particles, the final
product denoted by , and a flow of rejected particles , parameters are independent of the milling conditions and
which is recirculated to the mill inlet. The sum of the raw mate-
rial flow and the recirculated flow constitutes the total
feed to the mill . depending on the industrial process operation.
A. Material Fragmentation
In 1941, Brown [7] proposed an original description of the
grinding phenomenon, in which the material is no longer con-
sidered as a whole, but rather as a population of fragments clas-
sified according to their size. The population is subdivided into
granulometric classes of particles with similar sizes. The
coarsest particles belong to size interval 1, whereas the finest
ones belong to size interval . The grinding of the material in
a size interval is characterized by the disappearance of part of
the fragments belonging to this granulometric class and by the
appearance of smaller fragments, which add to other size inter-
vals . The model of fragmentation, as it is formulated in
this article, has been presented for the first time by Sedlatschek
and Bass [8]. To describe the kinetics of fragmentation, each
granulometric class is characterized by a specific breakage
rate and by a set of parameters representing the primary
breakage distribution of fragments from size into size .
Based on extensive laboratory-scale experiments, Austin et
al. [2] could formulate descriptive laws for the parameters
and . The breakage rates are given by simple power laws.
Abnormal breakage of large particles is described by a correc-
tion factor
(1)
where is the upper limit of size interval and , , , and
are constant coefficients. Only the parameters and depend
on the milling conditions (geometrical dimensions of the mill,
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rotational speed, ball load, and size distribution), whereas and
are material characteristics.
According to [2], the breakage distribution is independent
of the milling conditions, and is function of the material only. A
cumulative breakage distribution can be defined as follows:
(2)
which can be further expressed as
(3)
where with (size intervals are
assumed to have a geometric progression, with a constant ratio
, so that ), and , , , and are constant
coefficients.
In conclusion, material fragmentation is completely charac-
terized by eight parameters: , , , in the expression (1)
of the specific breakage rate, and , , , in the expressions
(2) and (3) of the breakage distribution. Among them, six
can, therefore, be completely determined by laboratory-scale
experiments. Only the parameters and have to be estimated
However, laboratory experiments carried out in the Mineral
Processing Department, Faculté Polytechnique de Mons (see
[9] for a detailed description of these experiments) showed that
modeling material fragmentation is more difficult than it might
appear from the previous developments.
• Laboratory experiments in small batch grinding mills are
delicate and very time-consuming (material preparation,
sampling, and particle size analysis through sieving and
laser analyzer).
• Parameter estimation usually leads to good model agree-
ment, in the sense that (1)–(3) reproduce well laboratory
experimental data. However, relatively large uncertainties
are associated to some of the parameters, and the transpo-
sition of the grinding laws to industrial mills gives poor
results.
• In laboratory-scale grinding mills, the small size of the
mill and the balls is responsible for abnormal breakage
of large particles (i.e., large particles are less efficiently
ground than small ones, which is expressed in (1) by the
factor ). In a well-designed industrial mill, abnormal
breakage does not occur, and the grinding laws can be
simplified accordingly (the factor including the two
parameters and can be eliminated).
• The estimated value of the parameter is close to zero,
with a large associated estimation error (the estimation
error can be assessed through sensitivity analysis and the
evaluation of the Fisher Information Matrix [10]—more
on this will be said in the section on parameter estimation),
and it seems reasonable to simplify the expression of the
breakage distribution coefficients by taking (in
turn, and are eliminated from the expression of ).
BOULVIN et al.: MODELING AND CONTROL OF CEMENT GRINDING PROCESSES 717

Actually, this simplification yields an expression which is close
to the one originally proposed by Kelsall [11].
Based on these observations, the expressions (1)–(3) of the
specific breakage rate and the breakage distribution can be re-
formulated as
from a “crash-test,” as discussed in Section III. Definitely,
size-dependent time distributions are out of reach with common
measurement devices.
The model partial differential (6) are supplemented by initial
and boundary conditions

(4)
(7)
(5) where is the initial mill hold-up, and is the initial
mass fraction of size .
which are characterized by three parameters , and .
To alleviate the problems associated with laboratory-scale
experiments, the unknown parameters will be estimated from
full-scale industrial data. The discussion of the estimation pro-
cedure is deferred to Section III.
(8)
B. Mass Balance Equations in the Mill
The ball mill can be considered as a tubular reactor, in which where is the feed flow rate, and is the feed
the “reaction” taking place is in fact material fragmentation. mass fraction of size .
Hence, a distributed parameter model can be developed, which
describes the evolution of the -size interval population (a pi-
oneering work in this area is the Ph.D. dissertation of Mika [5])
(9)

where describes the classifying effect of the grate discharge.

(6)
where denotes the material hold-up in the mill per unit
of length, and is the mass fraction of material of size
. Both and are functions of the spatial coor-
dinate along the mill axis and the time . The first two terms
at the right-hand side of the partial differential (6) describe the
material transport in the mill, i.e., diffusion with the coefficients
and convection with the velocities . Both parameters are,
in principle, allowed to be size-dependent, which yields size-de-
pendent residence time. The last two terms in (6) describe the
breakage process: the parameters represent the specific rate
of breakage of size , and the parameters describe the pri-
mary breakage distribution of fragments from size .
The description of material transportation in dry grinders, and
particularly the relationships between the parameters , and
the mill operating conditions, are very difficult to establish. On
the one hand, air sweeping used to remove dust from industrial
mills tends to accelerate very small particles and to drag them
into the ventilation circuit. However, the corresponding amount
of particles is relatively small (about 5% of the total mill flow
rate). On the other hand, material transportation inside the solid
bed of balls is very difficult to analyze due to the lack of ap-
propriate sensors. A survey of Rogovin and Hogg [12] on the
internal classification in dry grinders suggests that large parti-
cles move more quickly in the bed than small particles.
The only feasible approach to the description of material
transportation is experimental. A common method in practice
is the use of tracers, which allow the distribution of residence
time to be measured. This distribution can be easily related
to average velocity and diffusion coefficients. Information
on average transportation parameters can also be inferred
In the case of a two-compartment mill, the model is based on
one system of mass balance (6) for each compartment, supple-
mented by continuity conditions at the compartment interface
and boundary conditions at the mill inlet and outlet, which are
similar to (8) and (9).
C. Air Separator
The air separator is an important process in the grinding cir-
cuit, which separates the fine particles from the coarse ones, the
latter being recirculated to the mill inlet for further size reduc-
tion. Physical modeling of the air separator is certainly a difficult
task, not to say an intractable one, and most published modeling
studies are based on experimental correlation.
Here, a useful concept is the reduced efficiency curve [13]
(10)
where and are the separator fine product and
feed, respectively. The reduced efficiency is expressed as a func-
tion of the particle size normalized to the separator cut-point
, i.e., with . In this expression, A,
B, C, D are four constant coefficients. The parameter
is directly related to the separator bypass (flow of very fine par-
ticles in the recirculated flow). Experimental studies [13] tend to
show that the shape of the reduced efficiency curve, which is de-
termined by the parameters , B, and D, is characteristic of the
separator and the material being ground, but is independent of
the separator operating conditions. This latter observation will
be questioned in Section IV.
In common practice, the underflow separator efficiency
is used instead of , as illus-
trated in Fig. 2.

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718 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003
Fig. 2. Underflow separator efficiency 1 0 E (z ).
III. PARAMETER ESTIMATION
In the following, the unknown model parameters are esti-
mated from experimental data.
A. Mill Model
In order to estimate the parameters involved in the ball mill
model, an original approach is developed here, which is based
on a so-called “crash-test.” In this experiment, the ball mill is
halted at some time during normal operations (for which the
mill flow rate and material hold-up are measured) and material
samples are collected at several axial positions inside the mill
(here, at three spatial locations in the first compartment, and at
eight spatial locations in the second compartment). The particle
size distribution of these samples is determined through sieving
and laser analysis. Hence, the “crash-test” provides a complete
picture of the material hold-up and particle size distribution in-
side the mill.
From the knowledge of the material hold-up in the two mill
compartments and the mill flow rate, it is possible to infer av-
erage material velocities in the two mill compartments, e.g., if
, , (here, the
index refers to the compartment), then and
. estimated with a good level of confidence. Interestingly, the
Based on the particle size distribution inside the mill, a least-
square problem can be expressed as
(11)
where is the vector of unknown parameters ,
is the number of samples collected along the mill axis, is
the number of size intervals considered in the model descrip-
tion (here, ), is the measured sieving residue
corresponding to size (mass fraction (%) above size ), and
is the simulated sieving residue corresponding to size .
It is interesting to note that can be inferred from the
steady-state solution of the model (6)–(9). In [9], an original
method for solving analytically the stationary form of the par-
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TABLE I
ESTIMATED BREAKAGE PARAMETERS (4) AND (5)
tial differential (6)–(9) of the ball mill (or the complete set of
model (6)–(10)) has been developed. This analytical solution
procedure makes the evaluation of the least-square criterion in
(11) computationally inexpensive.
Minimization of the least-square criterion (11) gives the es-
timates of the breakage parameters listed in Table I. A lower
bound on the covariance of the estimation errors can be derived
from the inverse of the Fisher information matrix [10]
(12)
where and is the
measurement error covariance matrix.
It is a priori difficult to determine a reliable estimation of ,
and it is assumed here that there is a constant relative error of 1%
on the several measurements. Whereas the assumption of a con-
stant relative error is classical, a value of 1% might appear as an
optimistic guess (the representativeness of the samples, and the
accuracy of the particle size analysis could be questioned). The
idea here is to evaluate qualitatively whether the parameter esti-
mates make sense, when accurate measurements are available.
The values of the uncertainties associated with the parameter es-
timates are also listed in Table I, i.e., the standard deviation
is given for each parameter.
From this table, it is apparent that the parameters are
estimated value of is very close to that of , which would
tend to demonstrate that the compensation condition, devised
by Gaudin et al. Meloy in [14], is valid here. If it is assumed
that , then the product no longer depends
on . Indeed
(13)
Physically, this means that the rate of appearance of particles
smaller than or equal to , consecutively to the breakage of
particles of size ( , ), is no longer function of
, but is given by the rate of breakage of particles of size .
Recently, Zhang and Kavetsky [15] observed that the
breakage distribution coefficients are not intrinsic charac-
BOULVIN et al.: MODELING AND CONTROL OF CEMENT GRINDING PROCESSES 719

TABLE II
ESTIMATED BREAKAGE PARAMETERS (15) AND (16)

teristics of the material, as originally claimed by Austin et al.

[2], but rather depend on the milling conditions. Indeed, the
grinding mechanisms depend on the load movement inside the
mill. If the internal lining of the mill features lifters, then the
balls fall in cataracts, and material is crushed. Without lifters,
Fig. 3. Cumulative size distribution inside the mill (stars: experimental data;
material is essentially ground by attrition inside the rotating solid lines: simulation results).
load. As a consequence, the coefficients depend on the
milling conditions, and vary from one compartment of the mill
to the other.
Taking the compensation condition and the observation of
Zhang and Kavetsky [15] into account, it is possible to rewrite
(4) and (5) as

(14)

(15)

where , 2 is the index of the compartment.

If the estimation procedure is repeated with the new (14) and
(15) instead of (4) and (5), then the results listed in Table II
are obtained. A comparison between the simulated and mea-
sured cumulative size distributions inside the mill is presented
in Fig. 3. The model can reproduce the experimental data quite
satisfactorily.
Finally, experimental observations at different mill operating Fig. 4. Influence of the register position on the separation curve—comparison
points show that the breakage rates depend on the material between measured and simulated results.
hold-up inside the mill. This dependency can be represented
in the following way:

(16)

where is a constant parameter, which can be estimated

from experimental data collected at several operating points.
The influence of this nonlinearity on the system behavior will
be examined in Section IV.
Other nonlinearities are discussed in [2], such as the
slowing-down effect which expresses the fact that very fine
particles accumulate on the grinding balls, and in turn reduces
the breakage efficiency. In industrial practice, this effect is
alleviated by air sweeping and the use of fluidifying grinding
aids.

B. Air Separator
The separation curve depicted in Fig. 2 can be modified on
line by acting on registers. This action is of primary importance Fig. 5. Influence of the mill flow rate on the separation curve-comparison
for regulating the product fineness, and it is, therefore, required between measured and simulated results.

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720 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003
Fig. 6. Effect of a negative step change of 8% in the fresh feed flow rate
(dashed lines).
to model the influence of the register position on the separation
curve. In addition, experimental observations on the industrial
process show that the separation curve is affected by the material
flow entering the air separator (i.e., the mill flow rate ).
To assess the influence of these two variables, two sets of
experiments are conducted.
1) Several register positions are considered, and for each of
them the mill flow rate as well as the product flow
rate are measured. In addition, material samples are
collected at the separator inlet and at the two separator
outlets (product and recirculation), which are analyzed in
order to determine the particle size distribution.
2) For given register positions, several mill flow rates are
considered, and again material samples are collected at
the separator inlet and outlets, which are analyzed to de-
termine the particle size distribution.
Based on these experimental data, the parameters B, C, D, and
of (10) (note that A can be determined from the condition
) are estimated by minimizing a combined least-
square criterion measuring the deviations:
a) between the measured and simulated separation coeffi-
cients , and
b) between the measured and simulated ratios (cir-
culating loads).
As a result, sets of numerical values for the parameters B, C,
D, and are obtained, which correspond to the several reg-
ister positions and mill flow rates . The second step in
the modeling procedure involves the derivation of correlations
, , , flow rate decrease, the separator cut-point
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M —comparison between experimental (solid lines or stars) and simulation results
between the parameters and the influ-
encing variables. More details on the parameter estimation pro-
cedure can be found in [9].
Figs. 4 and 5 show the good model agreement for different
register positions and mill flow rates, respectively.
IV. ANALYSIS OF THE SYSTEM BEHAVIOR
To investigate process dynamics, it is common to observe
step responses around a chosen operating point. For example,
Fig. 6 illustrates the effect of a negative step change of 8% in the
fresh feed flow rate, and compares simulation and experimental
results. Here, the dynamic simulation results are produced
using a numerical procedure based on the method of lines
[16] for solving the model partial differential equations. It is
apparent that the mill flow rate decreases very significantly,
emptying the mill to such an extent that it is required to stop
process operation. Indeed, continued operation with a small
hold-up would be detrimental to the cement physical properties
and to the balls, which experience violent impacts resulting in
a large temperature increase inside the mill. For such extreme
operating conditions, the measurements become unreliable, and
the comparison between simulated and experimental outputs
meaningless.
The origin of this behavior mostly lies in the nonlinear effect
of the mill flow rate on the separation curve (see Fig. 5) and
on the nonlinear effect of the material hold-up on the breakage
rates (16). When the fresh feed flow rate and, in turn, the mill
increases and
BOULVIN et al.: MODELING AND CONTROL OF CEMENT GRINDING PROCESSES
M M M
Fig. 7. Steady-state relationship between material flow rates , ,
H
and material hold-up of the mill (measured values: stars—model: solid lines).
the separator bypass decreases. Therefore, the recirculated flow
rate decreases and, as a consequence, the mill empties. The
decreasing material hold-up of the mill results in a more efficient
grinding process and, in turn, in increasing material fineness at
the mill outlet [see the evolution of the cement fineness at the
mill outlet in Fig. 6(d)]. In the face of a decreasing flow rate
and an increasing material fineness, the separator recirculates
less material to the mill inlet.
Using the model equations, it is possible to draw steady-state
characteristics relating the several material flow rates , ,
to the material hold-up of the mill; see Fig. 7 (again, these
steady-state characteristics can easily be computed using the an-
alytical solution procedure devised in [9]).
From this figure, it is apparent that the recirculated flow rate
decreases with the material hold-up, and tends toward zero when
becomes small. In this limit case, the mill flow rate
would be equal to the product flow rate (then, the mill
would operate without recycle). On the other hand, when
is large, the breakage process becomes inefficient, and most
of is recirculated by the air separator, with the limit case
. The step responses depicted in Fig. 6 correspond to
a change of operating point from (1)–(4), as indicated on Fig. 7.
Both operating points are stable, but point (4) cannot be main-
tained due to the above-mentioned technical reasons (cement
quality and temperature). It is noteworthy that small variations
in the fresh feed flow rate result in large changes in the op-
erating conditions (i.e., large changes in the several mass flow
rates).
A closer look at the relationship between the product flow
rate and the material hold-up is taken in Fig. 8. In fact, the
steady-state characteristic has a maximum for
, which corresponds to the operating point (1).
It is easy to show that operating points located to the left of the
maximum are stable, whereas points located to the right are un-
stable. In practice, it is desirable to operate the grinding process
close to the maximum, in order to optimize the production. It is
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721
M
Fig. 8. Steady-state relationship between product flow rate and material
hold-up of the mill (measured values: stars—model: solid line).
therefore required to stabilize the process operation close to the
optimum by designing appropriate control structures.
V. CONTROL DESIGN
The general lack of measurement sensors in industrial
grinding processes hampers the development of advanced con-
trol strategies. The objective of the current study is to propose
a simple and robust control structure, which could easily be
implemented on site. The model developed in Section IV,
and the corresponding dynamic simulator, allows alternative
control schemes to be evaluated. In [6], a preliminary version
of the simulator was used to compare two control schemes:
1) a 2-independent-proportional integral (PI) scheme pro-
posed by Cigànek and Kreysa [17] in which the mill flow
rate is regulated by acting on the fresh feed flow rate, and
the product fineness is regulated by acting on the sepa-
rator;
2) a multivariable control scheme devised by Van
Breusegem et al. [18], in which the recirculated flow rate
and the product flow rate are regulated by acting on the
fresh feed flow rate and the separator.
The main drawback of 1) is that a simple PI control is not
robust enough to operate the grinding process close to the max-
imum of the graph depicted in Fig. 8, where gain changes sign.
The main objection to 2) is that a control of the product flow
rate does not lead to an efficient control of product fineness,
since product fineness and production are competitive objec-
tives. For instance, if material grindability decreases (material
grindability can be significantly affected by manufacturing and
storage conditions), the recirculated flow rate should increase
to maintain the product fineness at a prescribed level with, as a
consequence, a decrease of the product flow rate.
In the following, attention is focused on the design of a cas-
caded control structure for regulating the mill flow rate, and a
PI controller for regulating the cement fineness. Alternatively,
if online measurements of the recirculated flow rate are avail-
able, a feedforward control of the feed flow rate is described,
722 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

Fig. 10. Proportional control of mill flow rate—system response to a step

Fig. 9. Proportional control of the mill flow rate—system response to a step
change of +33% in the mill flow rate setpoint—comparison of simulated and change of 023% in the mill flow rate setpoint—comparison of simulated and
experimental results. experimental results.

which ensures a better decoupling of mass flow rate and fine-

ness regulation.

A. Mill Flow Rate and Product Fineness Control

As already mentioned, it is desirable to operate the grinding

process close to the maximum (1) of the steady-state char-
acteristic depicted in Fig. 8. In order to stabilize the process
operation, a simple proportional controller is first designed.
Figs. 9 and 10 show the system response to a step change of
and in the mill flow rate setpoint, respectively.
In both figures, the comparison of simulated and experimental
results again demonstrates the good model agreement. These
two experiments also confirm the bell shape of the steady-state
characteristic (Fig. 8). Indeed, a positive step change moves the
operating point from (1) to (2), where the process is open-loop
unstable, whereas a negative step change moves the operating
point from (1) to (3), where the process is open-loop stable. Fig. 11. Evolution of the product fineness following step changes in the
In the former case, the closed-loop gain is larger than 1 (the
0 0
register position ( 5% and 10%)—proportional control of the mill flow rate.

steady-state value is above the setpoint in Fig. 9). In the latter

case, the closed-loop gain is smaller than one (the steady-state
value is below the setpoint in Fig. 10) and the transient re-
sponse is somewhat slower.
Once the proportional controller is implemented, the next step
in the control design is the identification of the transfer func-
tions between manipulated variables, i.e., the mill flow rate set-
point and the registers of the air separator, and the controlled
variables, i.e., the mill flow rate and the product fineness. From
Figs. 9 and 10, the transfer between the mill flow rate setpoint
and the mill flow rate is modeled by a classical first-order-plus-
delay system (the time constant varies between 7 and 11 min,
whereas the time delay min). Fig. 11 shows the evolution
of the product fineness (which is measured in terms of the spe-
cific surface ) following step changes of and
in the register position. It is interesting to observe the two phases
in the transient response of the system. The first phase is almost
instantaneous and reflects the direct effect of the register posi-
tion on the separation curve and, in turn, on the product fineness.
The second phase is much slower and reflects the effect of the
material recirculation in the grinding circuit. For control pur-
poses, it is sufficient to take the main time constant (which is
about 25 min) into account.
As the dynamics of the mill flow rate transfer function is
about three times faster than that of the product fineness, it
is indicated to first design a PI controller for regulating the
mill flow rate, which, together with the proportional controller
already implemented, forms a “cascaded control structure”
(strictly speaking, this is not a cascade control as there is a
single measurement and the two blocks PI and P could be
interpreted as one controller; however, this terminology is
used to stress the fact that the two blocks are implemented
sequentially in order to achieve a stable inner loop). Then, a

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BOULVIN et al.: MODELING AND CONTROL OF CEMENT GRINDING PROCESSES
Fig. 12. Mill flow rate and product fineness control.
Fig. 13. Evolution of the elevator current—comparison between conventional
PI-control (upper graph) and cascaded control (lower graph).
new transfer function between the register position and the
product fineness is identified, and a PI controller is designed.
The complete control structure is depicted in Fig. 12.
In practice, the fluctuations of the elevator current (which is
an image of the mill flow rate) allow the performance of a con-
ventional PI control of the mill mass flow rate (upper graph in
Fig. 13) and the performance of the cascaded control structure
(lower graph in Fig. 13) to be compared.
B. Feedforward Control of the Feed Flow Rate
If measurements of the recirculated flow rate are available
on line (which is actually not the case in the industrial process
considered in this study), then an alternative control scheme de-
picted in Fig. 14 can be advantageously implemented.
The basic principle of this scheme [19] is the subcompensa-
tion of the variations of the feed flow rate induced by the
recirculated flow rate
(17)
with . available online, then an alternative control structure, based on
Intuitively, a unit of mass of raw material is not equivalent to
a unit of mass of recirculated material, at least in terms of initial
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723
particle size distribution. This idea is confirmed by simulation
tests which show that an exact compensation leads to oscillatory
mass flow rates. As a feedforward subcompensation does not
ensure zero steady-state error, a PI control loop is implemented,
which uses the recirculated flow rate and the mill flow rate to
reconstruct the feed flow rate (see Fig. 14).
The main advantage of this control scheme on the cascaded
control structure presented in Section V-A is that it achieves
a better decoupling of the mass flow rate and fineness regula-
tion. The performances of both control strategies are compared
in Fig. 15, which illustrates the evolution of the mill flow rate
and product fineness following a change of in the ma-
terial grindability, and in Fig. 16, which shows the evolution
of the manipulated variables. The feedforward control structure
achieves the best results in terms of mill flow rate regulation.
However, considering the technical difficulties associated with
the on line measurement of the recirculated flow rate (as the par-
ticles are transported on an air conveyor), the cascaded control
structure of the mill flow rate appears as an attractive, simple,
and “cheap” alternative.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this work, we present a nonlinear distributed parameter
model of a grinding circuit used in the cement industry. The
several unknown model parameters are estimated from experi-
mental data collected on the real plant. On this basis, a dynamic
simulator is developed, which can be used to analyze the system
dynamics and to explain experimental observations of real-life
operation. The nonlinear dependency of the rates of breakage
on the mill hold-up, and the nonlinear dependency of the sep-
aration curve on the mill flow rate have a significant influence
on the process behavior, and are at the origin of a bell shaped
functional relationship between the mill flow rate and material
hold-up. Hence, it is required to develop a control strategy to
stabilize the process operation close to the optimal point, where
gain changes sign. A cascaded control structure is designed for
regulating the mill flow rate, and a simple PI control loop is
proposed for regulating the cement fineness. Experimental re-
sults demonstrate the good performance of the proposed control
scheme. If online measurements of the recirculated flow rate are
a subcompensation of the variations of the feed flow rate ,
can also be considered.
724 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003
Fig. 14. Feed flow rate and fineness control.
Fig. 15. Variation of 010% in the material grindability—upper graph:
evolution of the mill flow rate—lower graph: evolution of the product fineness
(dash-dotted line: cascaded control of the mill flow rate with a sampling period
of 1 h, dashed line: cascaded control of the mill flow rate with a sampling
period of 5 min, solid line: feedforward control of the feed flow rate with a
sampling time of 5 min).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful
comments and suggestions.
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Fig. 16. Evolution of the manipulated variables—upper graph: evolution of
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BOULVIN et al.: MODELING AND CONTROL OF CEMENT GRINDING PROCESSES
Michaël Boulvin graduated in electrical engineering
from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons, Mons, Bel-
gium, and received the Ph.D. degree in applied sci-
ences from the same university in 2001.
He is presently working as a Project Engineer for
the company Alcatel-ETCA, at the space launch site
of Kourou, French Guiana.
Alain Vande Wouwer (M’03) graduated in elec-
trical engineering from the Faculté Polytechnique
de Mons, Mons, Belgium, in 1988 and received the
European doctorate degree in applied sciences from
Stuttgart University, Stuttgart, Germany, in 1994.
He is currently Associate Professor in the Control
Department of the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons.
His research interests are in distributed-parameter
systems, parameter and state estimation, and
bioprocess control.
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725
Renato Lepore graduated in electrical engineering
and in computer science and management engi-
neering from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons,
Mons, Belgium, in 1980 and 1982, respectively. He
is presently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the Control
Department of the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons.
He has been working as a consultant in the infor-
mation technology business until 1996. His research
interests are modeling, dynamic simulation, and con-
trol of industrial processes.
Christine Renotte graduated in electrical engi-
neering from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons
in 1989 and received the Ph.D. degree in applied
sciences from the same university in 1994.
She is currently Associate Professor in the Control
Department of the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons.
Her research interests include modeling, simulation,
and control of dynamic industrial systems. She is
also active in developing optimization algorithms
for neural networks.
Marcel Remy graduated in electrical engineering
from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons in 1972
and received the Ph.D. degree in applied sciences
from the same university in 1979.
Since 1972, he has been working in the Control
Department of the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons
where he is now Full Professor and Head of De-
partment. His research interests include biomedical
engineering, dynamic process simulation, parameter
identification, and process control.