Around 200 participants gathered from around the world to celebrate Gebr Pfeiffer’s 150th anniversary in Kaiserslautern, Germany, on 8-9 May 2014. The family-owned company looked back from its early, rich history of steam engines and grinding mills at the heart of the Palatinate manufacturing base to today’s achievements, which include the production and commissioning of the largest vertical roller mill in Australia at Cement Australia’s Port Kembla plant and the largest such mill in the world for Holcim’s Barroso works in Brazil.

Thinking big from an early age: in 1925 the biggest cement mill in the world leaves Gebr Pfeiffer’s factory

After a word of welcome by Gebr Pfeiffer’s General Manager Projects and Sales, Patrick Heyd, Executive Board member Gerold Keune glanced back at 150 years of Gebr Pfeiffer’s history, by first sketching a picture of the company’s founder, Jacob Pfeiffer, a keen promoter of technical innovation. It was the start of a company that would see the combination of high-quality German engineering and local manufacture to deliver state-of-the-art products such as separators and grinding mills to the world’s cement industry.
While France, Russia, England and the USA were part of its early geographical reach, today the company’s focus has shifted to Asia, Africa and the Americas, turning Gebr Pfeiffer into a truly global mill supplier. Projects such as the Port Kembla and Barroso mills demonstrate the firm’s international success.

Latest grinding trends

Guests were also treated to a guided tour around

Gebr Pfeiffer’s manufacturing facilities where the company’s

attention to detail could be experienced first-hand

Currently, the grinding mill market is recovering after the recession with the Indian market experiencing a boom year in 2010, according to executive board member Dr Robert Schnatz who updated the audience on the latest trends in grinding. While ball mills are still much in use, vertical roller mills (VRMs) are in a steady upmarch. VRMs are mainly used for grinding coal, slag and raw materials. They account for 97 per cent of the coal grinding market, 90 per cent of the slag grinding sector and 85 per cent in raw material grinding in 2012 and the share in the cement milling segment is increasing. Along with larger kilns come larger raw material mills and >6000kW grinding equipment is increasingly common. In addition, cement split-grinding plants are gaining in popularity. Moreover, as cement companies have cut their engineering departments, there is a greater demand for turnkey approaches, a trend to which Gebr Pfeiffer has responded by creating an EPC department.

 

Taking delegates through the Gebr Pfeiffer EPC approach was Jens Reimers, who described the development into the EPC market as “a natural progression after its engineering, procurement and commissioning experience.” EPC project management uses standard and state-of-the-art tools (eg P6 Primavera software) for project management but is geared to the customer’s requirements in the planning and execution stages. Clear communication with timely progress reports forms a key part of this process as well as ensuring internal and external transparency. In addition, efficient resource management supports realistic planning and avoids shortages later on in the project.

Technical case studies

Balaji, India

Bernd Henrich explained the operation of Gebr Pfeiffer’s MultiDrive® MVR cement mills without external heat by presenting a case study of the new MVR 5600 C-4 mill at Jaypee Cement’s Balaji grinding plant in India. At the plant, clinker is ground to Portland pozzolana cement at a rate of 320tph to a fineness of 3500cm2/g (Blaine). In an integrated cement works, hot gas for the operation of the VRM is available as waste heat. However, in stand-alone units, no waste heat source is available for the production of external heat. As a result, a supply of fuel is required, limiting profitability. Following a reduction of water sprayed from 2.8 to one per cent to improve mill performance, it was possible to operate the mill without an external heat source and meet performance guarantees. The optimisation of the mill enable an increase in the feed rate from 350tph to 354tph while specific energy consumption fell from 18.1kWh/t to 16.5kWh/t.

Port Kembla, Australia

Head of Process Engineering, Dr Caroline Woywadt, presented the latest operating data of the largest VRM in Australia, installed at Cement Australia’s Port Kembla sea terminal near Sydney. Gebr Pfeiffer, in cooperation with Cemengal of Spain, delivered a MVR 6000 C-6 grinding mill as well as storage facilities for clinker, additives, slag and cement.

The Gebr Pfeiffer mill offers several advantages when compared to traditional VRMs, explained Dr Woywadt. Its active redundancy concept enables the mill to continue operation even if one roller is under maintenance, leading to lower downtimes. In addition, in case of gearbox failure, a MultiDrive® module is available to be shipped to this remote grinding unit, requiring the mill owner to store fewer spares, with significant cost benefits.

The focus then turned to the Ras, Bihar and Raipur plants of Shree Cement, India, when the cement producer’s H M Bangur presented a case study on the application of modular MVR mills at the company’s cement plants.

Gebr Pfeiffer’s own Sascha Hamm offered cost-efficient solutions with Pfeiffer mills at Limak Cimento in Turkey. Limak contracted Gebr Pfeiffer to deliver a wide range of MPS mills for coal, raw material and cement grinding facilities at its Sanliurfa, Trakya, Balikesir and Ankara plants.

Patrick Heyd focussed on solid fuel grinding with Pfeiffer’s MPS vertical mills. He highlighted Ras Al Khaimah White Cement plant’s petcoke conversion project which saw the Kaiserslautern-based company deliver two MPS 2800 BK mills with a SLS 2250 BK high-efficiency classifier. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, Cemindo Gemilang installed an MPS 4500 BK mill for lignite grinding at its 10,000tpd Bayah works on Java.

The way ahead

A well-attended gala dinner provided further opportunity

for informal discussions in a relaxed atmosphere

Offering a guide to future grinding market developments, Dr Joe Harder reviewed the latest trends in the cement industry, showing changes in geographical focus and a falling clinker factor. Global cement demand increased by 6.8 per cent in 2013, driven by surging consumption in China, which noted a market expansion of 9.5 per cent while in the rest of the world demand advanced by 2.9 per cent. For 2014, a more balanced trend is forecast with growth in China falling to five per cent and the rest of the world advancing by 3.7 per cent to give an overall growth rate of 4.5 per cent. Over the next few years, Harder predicts Chinese cement demand to peak. Meanwhile, the country’s cement producers are expanding rapidly and at a considerably faster rate than their global peers. In 2013, China’s top three increased capacity by 17 per cent. However, this is expected to decelerate as the Chinese market slows. Moreover, he highlighted the emergence of new multinational players such as Cementos Argos, Votorantim, PPC and Dangote Cement which are spreading their wings in their home regions of Latin America and Africa.
The final subject he touched upon was the development of the clinker factor. The average global clinker factor now stands at 0.73. The decreasing clinker factor has seen global cement capacity expand faster than clinker capacity, and is expected to impact future capacity investments and equipment supply markets. For instance, clinker grinding orders increased significantly in India between 2009-11 at the expense of the share taken up by raw material and coal grinding.
These latest trends are expected to see Gebr Pfeiffer respond with further product and service development, offering cement plants worldwide grinding solutions that reflect the best of German engineering tradition and innovation at the same time. After all, as Jacob Pfeiffer Sr would have put it: “Resting is Rusting”. 
Article first published in International Cement Review, June 2014.