Understand how the use of some alternative fuels can help your industry to reduce clinker costs!
Fuels are essential in the production of several industrial sectors. They are the source of energy for the kiln and help to production many materials, such as cement, which are used in other sectors, such as construction, for example.
To produce the cement, it is necessary to produce clinker first, since even using methods to replace it with calcined clay or pozzolana, it does not do it completely. To produce this material, there is the clinkerization, which mixes the raw material and heats it in an kiln up to 1450 degrees Celsius, which means that the company has a high cost of fuel for this production.
For this reason, many industries have found the use of alternative fuels to be a great way to reduce clinker costs. In today’s post from Dynamis we will talk a little more about them and show you what the impact this is on the production of your cement!
What is alternative fuel?
Since the discovery of fire, back in prehistory, humanity has realized how important fuel is for our lives and even for our existence. They are the source of energy that moves the world, used in various sectors, from the productive, as in an industry, to our daily lives, as in automobiles.
Going from wood and coal, to oil and ethanol, we know that there is, in the world, an immense amount of energy source that can be used for different activities and processes, and in various sectors of the market.
n order to do most processes, whether industrial or not, what we call fossil fuels are used, that is, all those that are formed by means of natural processes, such as coal, oil, natural gas, among others, which are widely used in the manufacture of cement, but charge a high cost to clinker.
Alternative fuels, in turn, are all non-conventional energy sources and they can be very useful for production processes, especially cement, where there is a high cost of fuel in your kiln.
But how can these types of fuels reduce the cost of clinker?
As mentioned above, clinker is a material obtained from a process known as clinkerization. It works as follows:
After a homogeneous mixture is made with its raw material, it is introduced in a rotary kiln, where it will be heated up to 1450 ºC, which takes place in the clinkerization process. In order to do this, fuels are used to feed the kiln, which, in most cases, are used fossils, such as oil, coal, among others, which, in addition to not being renewable, are of high cost for their production.
Using alternative fuel will help to reduce these costs with clinker, in addition to polluting the environment a little less, depending on which one will be used. But how can you change the fuel without losing its quality?
How to reduce kiln costs using alternative fuels?
To reduce the costs of clinker in its production, it will be necessary to reduce the costs with the kiln, making use of alternative fuels for this. There are two ways to perform this replacement.
The first of these is the use of them in the calciner which, in order to maintain the quality of the clinker and still achieve fuel substitution above 70%, Dynamis realized several studies and projects that allowed us to define the minimum characteristics to be met by a system handling and injection of alternative fuels so that it is robust and highly reliable, yet still maintaining simplicity in its concept and installation.
For this, with the use of simulations in CFD software and in the house software, Dynamis, taking into account several operating parameters (temperatures, oxygen concentration, gas velocity), the geometry of the calciner (and the smoke chamber / riser duct) and the characteristics of the fuel, developed a method for defining the optimum quantity and the best injection points for these types of fuels, whether in the calciner or in the smoke chamber / riser duct.
Another method of reducing costs of the kiln and, consequently, of the clinker, is the use of alternative fuels in the main burner. For this, you can use D-Flame, which was developed with eyes to improve combustion, both with the main and alternative fuels, making it a great option for your production!