Hello everyone

I have a question: What are the problems that an electrical engineer may face and asked to solve in a cement plant ?

and also, what are the improvements that an electrical engineer can suggest in a cement plant ?

Thanks a lot for your answers in advance.

 

I suspect you mean concrete, and I have no answer to your question. It is chemistry, and I am a chemist.

One of the important ingredients is/are the "pozzolans" that are added. I developed a nice mixture that inhibits ground hogs from burrowing around the perimeter of my buildings, it works in damp areas, but it does not ruin my mower when I run over it. Then, I discovered it is similar to the stuff used as barriers at toll booths.

Oh well, what is an old guy to do?

John

 

One would think -

1) Hi power KW sized motors and controls
2) Sensor technology for caustic environments
3) Level, weight, temp, flow, pressure sensing
4) 3 phase power systems, isolation....
5) Lighting, HID
6) Energy conservation
7) Industrial control busses

To name a few

Regards, Dana.

 

It will depend on the plant. Is it rich?

Your largest duty will be keeping the kiln line going.

That includes feeding it, and packaging the output. Dust, grit, dirt and heat will keep you busy just crushing and feeding the kiln. When you get that licked.....something in packaging will fail. And while your fixing that.......quality control will call and request a cooking parameter change on the kiln.

Sound familiar? Oh...and the RR called and the 20 cars you special ordered for PM product storage are delayed 48 hrs. kill the kiln. cancel the weekend.

You'll love it. The problem is not finding improvements, you will find many........you need a budget.

Efficiency costs money. Good luck.

 

I have never worked in a cement plant – but I would suspect the dusty conditions likely to impact the reliability of control circuits.

Therefore maintaining the integrity of the IP (ingress protection) of the electrical enclosures to be important.

I would even recommend that besides adequate overall IP enclosure protection, that any components with contacts such as switches/relays/contactors/plugs/sockets etc are IP rated in their own rite – to minimise the chances of dust affecting their normal operation.

Any dust in the right concentration can create an explosive atmosphere – but it is likely that measures are in place to prevent this, rather than the use of intrinsically safe electrical equipment.

 

I was basically going to address what @Hymie said. Ingress protection, explosive atmosphere, cooling of enclosures. They may even require a large back-up power source. It might also be a damp atmosphere. I might even suspect corrosive as well.

Dust emissions. Preventative maintenance schedules.

Nearly just the opposite of a lab area I worked in that used Hydride gases. The general enemy was fingerprint contamination for our process and the gases we worked with would spontaneously combust in air and deadly in ppm levels.

One of the other gases, Hydrogen, explodes and it did once and my safety system worked for the wrong reason. I should say spontaneously combusted. management had the Hydrogen detection system tucked away in a box somewhere. Lots of changes after the investigation of the explosion.

 

I would insist on all conduit to be galvanized and of a threaded nature, not compression etc.
The same for all junction boxes and enclosures to be sealed and of the correct NEMA rating.
Also where possible, all motors to be TEFC or Totally enclosed.
A strict P.M, Preventative Maintenance Schedule.
Max.

 

1) Plenty of toxic dust very everywhere
2) Rust everywhere
3) Siemens Simantec on the Windows-CC everywhere
4) work near the very high towers, very hot rolling cylinders, damn bad weighting platforms, killing poisonous micro-grain fraction of cement powder, high voltage air purification filters, damn noisy everywhere, but rather good salaries.

 

RE: ""I have never worked in a cement plant""
I was working. Ten years I inspected their environmental fluxes, thus the `sweet` memories of hanging on outher wall of tower with heavy rucksack full of instruments in 50 meters high when one stair step is broken and I hang only by hands, its unmemorable, be sure. And tower is shaking by the wind, to and fro, to and fro.
However the best was candy plant roof. There I made a mesurements in the deep winter with plenty of snow on the roof, and damn, me, with so much mountain climbing experience, but I produced a most foolish junior mistake - I stepped from pipe to pipe across the snow thus the snow plate was partially cut and avalanche was initiated. So, together with all gadgets I was thrown across the whole roof up to the very side, 9 floor high, but I got chance to cramp into relings. Not everywhere them exists, but happily there they was. So I staid alive. But this helped me not much at textile plant, where my task was measure the dust. The stacks was high and stairs was very bad, so I had idea-fix to get to that stack from inside. Just open the float chamber doors, come in with the aspirator and cables, and hang the samplers at the same normal place only from downside not from upside. Need to say, this float-chamber was rather clean thingy, about half kilometer long and 50 meters wide with meter deep layer of cotton fluff, but air clean like at forest. So I used a high flux aspirator containing a collector engine. When I put finger on switcher, just like a thunder in the brain striked thought - damn, there will be small sparkles around the collector... And around me are probably hundreds of tons the main shooting powder component. Yepp, so I staid alive again, and Riga city had not lost a half into blast-hole.
So, then I choose to change a life again and left that roof-top environmental job behind.