PERFORMANCE

ANALYSIS ON BM1 &

BM2
COMPARISON ON MILL PERFORMANCE
RAW MATERIALS
MATERIALS GRINDABILITY INDEX MOISTURE CONTENT
CLINKER 13.5 KWH/T 0
GYPSUM 8.2 KWH /T
GASH Unknown
SLAG
POZZOLANA
 Poor Blending and Segregation of Clinker
Materials Including oversized GASH
Material
• Clinker segregation is another well known situation which is a result of poor stockpiling
practices (end piles especially) and poor bin design and bin filling practices.  If segregation is
occurring, the mill feed can be either from coarse to fine and back again.  When the mill is
receiving clinker that’s too coarse then, retention in the first compartment rises (and
sometimes backspills at the mill inlet were observed ) and the second chamber empties and starts
to over grind resulting to an uncontrollable low bed of materials with high material discharge
temperature. If the clinker becomes too fine then it flushes through immediately to the second
compartment and overwhelms it.  Mill outlet fineness suddenly drops and the circulating load
jumps up rapidly. Some events of  mill cycles have resulted from clinker segregation problems.
• GASH material component’s with Oversized/uncrushed materials together with improper mixing
results to a poor mill grindability. Manual mixing of raw material component for GASH using
heavy equipment like payloaders or backhoe leads to segregation and improper Blending.
Proportionality of GASH raw materials which includes slags, pozzolan, volcanic ash or lahar
composes of rich silica content which is hard to burn in the Kiln and hard to grind in the mill. The
ratio and proportion of these mixed components are exclusively controlled by the QA department
and still under their data privacy policy.
CLINKER CHEMICAL COMPOSITION &
GRANULOMETRY
• Main Contributors of Hard Grinding:
• C2S content: High C2S content of Clinker results to hard Grinding in the mill and it affects the
performance and increases the specific power consumption for certain Blaine and fineness
quality requirements.
• SO3:The clinker SO3 content has been recognized as having an impact on grindability.  Higher
SO3 in clinker results in a reduction in grindability and increases specific power consumption
per ton.  Also, increasing SO3 (above optimum) content in clinker results in a decline of the 28
day cube strengths at a constant Blaine.  It is important to watch for this as a lot of plants
switch to higher sulfur (and cheaper) fuels.
• C3S SIZES: Large alites means over-burnt clinker thus it’s harder to grind.  Clinker with a lot
of pores are easier to crush.  Some (not all) plants can monitor their grindability by watching
the clinker literweights.  As it rises, it’s an indication that the clinker becomes over-burnt;
sometimes balls up into bigger pieces were formed during the Pyro processing ; and sometimes
it gets very dense (no pores).  Good literweights are usually between 1250 and 1350.  Watch
out if gets above 1400.  Note that some plants make a very fine yet seemingly hard to grind
clinker.  It has been observed that a high proportion of big alite crystals can be found in the fine
sizes, based on some studies.
Mill Internals
• Liner Profile
• Grinding Media Wear Rate
• Volumetric Charge Loading (Grinding Media Migration)
• Intermediate Diaphragm Condition
 Liner Profile:
• The deterioration of the lifting liner plates was also considered as another
contributors that affects the performance of the mill. At some point of the mill in
revolution with critical speed there is a certain projectile angle that hits the toe of
materials and performs the grinding work inside the mill chamber especially in
chamber 1 which has lifting liners installed to protect the mill shell as well as lifting
the grinding media at certain critical speed to do the grinding work. Considering the
wear of liners in a certain period of grinding the lifters worned out that affects the
production, specific power consumption, and unattainable quality targets. In some
plants they use these standard figures for their reference : Running Hours Grams/ KWH

•
Liner Profile Continuation

Newly Installed Lifter Liners Worn out Lifter Liners

 Liner Profile Continuation
• As we can see in the figures that the trajectory or grinding path changes as
the liner wears in a certain period of grinding. When the grinding balls
trajectory changes at constant critical speed, the tendency of the steel balls
to hit the material to do the grinding work becomes less because most of
the material to be hit by the ball were at the toe side of the mill (see the
next figure) and that means for a low production output, unattainable
quality targets, wear rates of grinding media due to ball impact
 Grinding Media Wear
• Wear rates of grinding balls is the reduction of weight per ton or weight per
kilowatt-hours from a certain initially weighed/gauged media to its final
weight in a certain period of time (running hours) with respect to its total
produced quantity of cement based on its quality requirement set for
Grinding.
• It is associated with the effect of projectile impact, tumbling, cataracting,
attrition and cascading motion or movements of grinding media inside the
mill chambers. The increase of wear rates of grinding media is due to
abnormal or uncontrolled bed of materials and grinding balls to perform the
grinding work inside the mill or in other terms the required ratio of steel
balls over the material to be ground is not in a proper range. Low bed of
material inside mill chambers or low voidage creates a metal to metal
contacts which decreases the size and shape of the grinding balls(balls to
liner and balls to balls contact).
 Charge Loading & (Grinding Media
• Migration)
Optimized charge Loading is another key to a better performance of the mill by
measuring or calculating the required media per unit chamber based on the
particle size distribution analysis. By using this method we can assure that the
proper arrangement of media required per unit chamber are properly met
Mill System Arrangement and Capacity
• Mill System Fan
• Dust Collector Air to Cloth Ratio
• Purging Air Pressure
• Ductings
• Air Leak
• Bucket Elevator
Mill Fan
• Power - 450 KW
• Static Pressure – 7000 Kpa (70 mbar)
• Volume Flow Rate – 135,000 m3/hr
 Dust Collector Air to Cloth Ratio
• Total # of Filter Bags – 1920
• Total # of compartment – 20 (w/ 96 pcs. Of filter bags per unit compartment
 Purging Air and Differential Pressure
• Cleaning Air Pressure requirement (0.6-0.7Mpa) based on a stablished data
was essential for the production and optimization of the mill operation. As
per observation if the purging pressure is below the requirement(ex.
<0.5Mpa) then the differential pressure of the Dust Collector increases as a
result of thick amount of dust cake adheres on the filter bags for the entire
repeated cycle of the purging system which is the cause of insufficient
purging or cleaning of the bags and with this kind of phenomena the static
pressure as well as the volume air flow in the entire Mill system will gradually
reduced. And if this happens during the steady state conditions, then the
production will also reduced as the chain effect of the Mill system partially
choked as an indication that CL rises, Mill Power goes down due to over
grinding/retardation, bucket elevator current increases as well as the quality
requirement disturbed. (See circuit analysis on the next page).
 MILL CIRCUIT ANALYSIS
DP = C
SP = C
BEP = C

DUST COLLECTOR

OSEPA

RPM = C
REJECT
CL = C
PQ = C
DC FAN

PRODUCT

FR = C
LEGEND:
CEMENT MILL C- CONSTANT
FR- FEED RATE
FRESH FEED + CL MP- MILL POWER
BEP- BUCKET ELEVATOR POWER
BUCKET ELEVATOR CL- CIRCULATING LOAD
MP = C
DP- DIFFERENTIAL PRESSURE
SP- STATIC PRESSURE
PQ- PRODUCT QUALITY
 Mill CIRCUIT ANALYSIS continuations
DIFFERENTI FAN OSEPA BUCKET CIRCULATI MILL FEED RATE PRODUCT
AL STATIC LOAD ELEVATOR NG POWER QUALITY
PRESSURE PRESSURE @RPM=C LOAD

Increases Increases Increases Increases Increases Decreases Reduced Reduced

Ductings
AIR LEAKS
Bucket Elevators