Cemtech Live Webinar: Bulk Storage and Material Handling

Hello and welcome. My name is Thomas Armstrong, managing editor of International Cement Review. I'm very pleased to be here for this Cemtech live webinar. this is our third. We're in March already. bulk material handling and storage, as you can see. We're moving through each month a different topic a different part of the cement manufacturing process. really a pleasure to be here with you today. we are International Cement Review behind Cemtech. many of you know us. if not, we're a monthly publication a subscription. here are the details. every month a new magazine covering all the different aspects of cement plant operations, technology, scientific papers and market reports.

so please take a look online on cement.com/subscribe for all the information you need about the cement sector. A quick word about what we've got coming up ahead. our next conference will be in June, fourteenth to seventeenth of June in Bangkok. Manufacturing Excellence and the Circular Economy. This is sponsored by Siam Cement Group. and we hope that you can join us. If you're active in Asia, then this meeting will be perfect for you. Conference, exhibition, plenty of networking plant tours and much more in a, in the fantastic city of Bangkok. But for today, we're gonna focus on bulk material handling and storage and different aspects of it.

we'll be looking at deep technical technology online elemental analysis, what to do when those methods do not work. we'll be hearing from Linsys in Lithuania. we'll be looking at silo visibility, so we we're getting a bit into digitalite- digitalization here. how to optimize the transport of your cements to the silos at your end customers using very clever technology provided by Silo Connect. we're gonna hear also from RUED in Germany. obviously, at the center of bulk materials handling is, are conveyor technologies and the solutions around that, we'll be hearing from RUED in Germany.

but to start us off today I'm very pleased to be able to introduce Irfan Akikol from Chimsar Americas, who's gonna talk to us about their new grinding plant in Houston, Texas. it's a new six hundred thousand ton plant. and here with the details is Irfan, if you'd like to start sharing now. Irfan is Operations Manager at Chimsar Americas in Houston. he holds an MSC in chemical engineering and has spent more than two decades in the cement industry. He began his professional career in two thousand and seven as a production engineer and has expertise in pyro processing, grinding, clinker, and cement production as well as all the other aspects of running cement plants.

it's a, it's a really interesting project as you'll find out. I'm gonna hand the floor now over to Irfan. Please let's hear what you have to say. Thank you, Thomas. So I hope everybody can see the presentation. If it's so I'll continue. So first of all we as Chimsar Americas and Chimsar Global want to thank to Cement Review and Cement Tech to give this opportunity to explain our new project which is the gray cement facility located in Houston in Texas. So my name is Irfan. thank you, Thomas, introduced, you already introduced myself. and I'll continue with the presentation and any question you wanna have, you can, you can ask any time you want.

So what we are going to explain today, so we are going to... I'm going to give a kind of brief introduction about Chimsar, and then we'll give the i-information about white and the gray cement facility located in Houston in the same property. So white a little bit, but we are going to focus on the gray because the gray is the new facility that we already commissioned. And then we will try to give a kind of information about the advantage of our lo- our location that brings a lot of thing positive for us. And then we'll go into detail about the material handling about the... In, in the, in the gray cement facility. So here we go. So Chimsar, a kind of a brief introduction.

So we are a worldwide cement manufacturer. and then we have gray cement facilities located in different countries, in Turkey, in Ireland, and in United State. we have total eight facility in the worldwide. And for the white, Chimsar is the second largest player in the global white cement market, and we can produce white cement in Turkey, in Mersin and Eskisehir cement plants, and also in Bunol, Valencia, Spain, and for sure in Houston in the white cement facility. And not only the gray and white, but also Chimsar produce, has ability to produce calcium aluminate cement. And for the calcium aluminate, Chimsar is the third largest player in the CAC, calcium aluminate cement market.

So this, this prod- this product, calcium aluminate cement, production takes place in Mersin plant in Turkey. and not on-The ready mix in worldwide, in Turkey and Ireland Çimsa has 38 ready mix concrete facilities. and also some non-cement materials like sheets sprits, traits we produce in one of plant in, in, in belongs to Çimsa in, in Ireland. So if you look at the map, you can see the different locations in the world map.

And we do the business more than seventy countries in the world, eight production facilities, as I already mentioned, and not only the production facilities but also the terminals, international terminals we have total six in the world and thirty-eight ready mix concrete facilities. And plus, we have R&D facilities located in Mersin, Turkey, and also in Germany in Munich Technical University. worldwide Çimsa has more than two thousand employees. And after this introduction, I will go through with the Houston, Texas cement facility of Çimsa. Name is Çimsa Americas, the subsidiary Çimsa Americas.

So this white cement facility has been established in two thousand and seventeen, and the operation and the commissioning took place at the last quarter of two thousand and nineteen. So here with this white cement facility in United States, we have about and sometimes more than fifteen percent of market share. And what we produce here is we can sell by the silo trucks or PD cars, I mean on the railway. So the cement mill here for the white is a horizontal ball mill with two chamber, and the production capacity is three hundred thousand metric tons in a year. and we have total four silos, each has thousand metric tons capacity.

And for the raw material and the clinker, we have a linear warehouse, so-called, which has the capacity of sixty thousand metric tons. In the white cement facility, we have also packing house with eighteen hundred bags per hour production capacity. And the gray. This one has been commissioned something like six months ago at the last quarter of two thousand and twenty-five. We started the feasibility of this facility in two thousand and twenty-three. And after we, we put the design and everything the construction took place and we completed the facility less than eighteen months.

And at the last quarter of two thousand and twenty-five, we started to produce gray cement in this facility at the same property where the white cement plant... white cement production takes place. So in this gray cement plant other than the white, we have six hundred thousand metric tons capacity in a year, which is the double of, of white. Two times bigger when you compare with the white. In this facility, the silos, we don't have four, but we have two, but the capacities is, are higher. So in this gray we can store total six thousand metric tons of gray cement in the silos. We have total two.

Warehouse, the same what we have in the white, which is linear, linear storage hole, and the storage capacity is the same with the clinker and the raw materials, gypsum, total sixty thousand metric tons. in the gray we have three loading spot. Two is dedicated for the truck, and the one is dedicated for the railway to the PD cars. the, the gray cement mill again is a horizontal ball mill with two chamber, closed circuit third generation separator, a, a bigger version when, when you compare with the white. and, and, and as I said, the, the silos are total six thousand, three thousand each, total two silos, and a total six thousand final product storage capacity we have.

So h- here is the top view from the property. so at the right-hand side, you can see the white cement, and the left-hand side you can see the gray cement facility. Everything is identical, but the capacity is higher, two times bigger. And one other thing is in the white, we have a packing house because there's a, you know, bag cement market for the white. But in the gray, everything is bulk, so there is no packing house in the gray cement facility. So here is the you know, advantage of the facility. A lot of opportunities comes with this location. so we are located in Houston in Texas in the Watco terminal. So terminal is just located nearby the Buffalo Bayou.

That means that means the, the, the huge vessels can go into this bayou and can berth in the dock of Watco so we can get the material from the vessel, I mean the clinker and the raw materials and the gypsum additives, everything on the vessel from this dock by the vessels and transport them to the truck, to the ve-- from the truck to the facility. It's less than one mile, so has a good advantage for the receiving of the, of the raw materials from any country where the material, it has and the clinker has high quality, a-a-and you know, good, good, good option in case of price, you know. So other than this, this facility is just located nearby the highway industrial road.

So every trucks can easily go in, get the cement and go out, so without any congestion, traffic con-congestion. And plus, we have a railway just going in and out to the facility. So everything we can produce, we can sell on the railway to the PD car without making any, any extra transportation. These are the advantage being in this location.So how we transfer, how we import the clinker and raw materials. remember the previous picture all the big vessels with 50,000 draft weight capacity just berthed to the Watco port to the dock, and then we use shore crane or the ship crane on the vessel and grab the material from the holes and then take them to the eco hoppers.

There are two eco hoppers that we get the material by the shore crane and then load them on the truck. This dump truck make maximum one miles of transportation back and forth from port to the facility and takes all the clinker and the raw material to the receiving unit of the facility for the white and gray. So here's the detail of the gray cement facility. So this is the receiving unit, and we have total four bay inside the li- linear warehouse. So the most of them are dedicated for the clinker, which is something like 50,000 metric tons, and the rest three bay, total 10,000 metric tons, is for the additive and for the gypsum.

Here is a cement mill with the green color at the heart of the facility, and then we have conveying system elevator. It takes the final product, cement, to the silos. And we have three loading spot located underneath the silos to sell the material, to sell the final product to the customers on the silo truck and the PD car. So the details of the material handling and the receiving unit is, here we start in the receiving unit. We have a surface feeder system where the dump trucks carry the clinker or raw material, comes backward and dump the material.

and this material goes to the elevator through a surface feeder, and this elevator carry the material to the tripper car located at the top of the linear warehouse, and we can position the chute of this tripper car anywhere we want at the warehouse and just locate the clinker or additive or gypsum into warehouse to feed them to the cement mill. Then we use front end loaders to feed this clinker and raw materials, other raw materials to the hoppers. Total we have four hoppers. One is dedicated for, for clinker, and the other one is for gypsum, and the rest two is for the additives.

The Pfister dosing units located underneath the hoppers packs the material according to recipe, just loads them combine them in the belt conveyor and feed it to the cement mill by the help of feeder feeder elevators. after we produce the cement, this one goes to the... this cement goes to the silos in a mechanical way through the air slide and to the elevator. This elevator takes the material to the top of the silo and feed them to the silos. Underneath the silo, we have total three loading, load out spots, two dedicated for the trucks and one dedicated for the rail cars. Each silo can feed any of the loading spots. So the south silo can feed north and the rail car and itself.

North can feed itself and south and the rail car, and every silo can feed each others. So this is another advantage that we have that, that comes with the design underneath the silo. so these are all details with the material handling. And finally, I want to show you a video after the commissioning that we got from the cement mill gray cement mill silos and the warehouse that you can see all of them in the same video. Here we go. So these are all from CIMC Americas today. And if you have any question want to ask, we are ready to answer all of them. Erfan, thank you very much. A really nice survey of your new plant, and it's, it's an amazing footprint you...

to have the white and the gray and, and on such a compact footprint is very, very impressive. And you have the amazing logistical options with rail and, and truck as well. I was interested to hear that you're, you don't have a conveyor from the from the port. So from the port to the plant is not very far, is it? But you s- you're, you're still using trucks to, to carry out that transportation. correct. That's a really good question. And the thing is, we already did the feasibility of the study to have a conveyor from dock to the facility. the thing is we are here in the Watco terminal, so there was some kind of constraints in the dock.

so the p- the landlord, the property owner didn't wanna locate that kind of, you know, structure in the dock. And on the other hand it was, you know a little bit, a lot of, you know tenants here located that was other customers. So it was not, you know agreed at that time, but it's for sure a project that we can take care of in the future - Yeah... anytime it's feasible. Yeah, yeah. And it works, I guess, perfectly well with trucks. there's... You've got a good loading system on arrival, and then it's... Is it, is it all a, is it a highly automated plant? how many people are working there? so we are in total 32 employees here working, and other than this, it's a completely automated facility.

Everything is controlled from the SCADA system. so just a few employee taking care three shift of production front end loader, laboratory, control room, and the packing house. and other than this, everything is automated. and we are doing in total, we are working 24/7, three shift, and in total, we are working with 32 employees. Very good. And the clinker that you're receiving, is that all from your own production facilities in Turkey at Mersin, or is it just bought on the, on the open market? How do you, how do you procure your, your clinker? So here the answer is, I have to give the answer in two different way. The first for the white and then second for the gray.

For the white cement, yes, Thomas, correct. Everything we receive, we receive from Turkey. white cement plant located in Mersin and Eskisehir. but for the gray, we always look at the market and focus on the quality, and when the clinker is receivable by means of quality, we focus on the market advantage, and sometimes we receive from our own cement plant located in Turkey, sometimes from Egypt, and in the future, anywhere we wanna get if the quality is good and acceptable for our standard. Yeah. And, and what is the main type of gray cement that you're manufacturing? the market recently has shifted from towards limestone cement in the US. do you...

Is that the product that you make, or are you making an OPC? we are now producing according to ASTM standard type one product ordinary, ordinary Portland cement, but the facility is ready to produce type 1L, which is PLC, Portland limestone cement, and any additive cement because the structure design is ready to do it. But now we just go into market in the gray cement with the gray cement product with type one, type two product. And one additional information, we have immediately got the textile certificate so we can sell anybody anybody wants to have this product with the textile certificate can get the material.

So short answer for your question is we are not producing OPC, but able to produce any cement we want and will produce in the future, and we'll start with PLC, and we'll, we'll expand our product portfolio- Mm... in the gray cement. When did the, the... When did you start making cement making the gray cement? Is it...? So the trial commissioning took place on September 2025, and officially we started to produce in 1st of October 2025, just five, six months ago. Yeah. So it's, it's recent. You're still getting into the market- Yeah... that way. Very good. So yeah, starting with the OPC, but then building into the other, other forms of cement that are currently being sold on the market.

out of interest what is the... You mentioned you had Pfister dosing systems. I wonder if you could talk about who produced who ma- who manufactured the mill and classifier, and what ki- what is the setup there? The cement mill and the separator classifier is from China, from Sinoma, and then dosing system is from Pfister, FL Smith Pfister, Fuller Pfister maybe, we- Yeah... we need to see. And then the silo itself from United State, the two silos from s- from Tank Connection, and all the others, we did EPC contract with this gray cement facility, and our general construction company was Turkish. And then all the others than this was completed by the Turkish manufacturing companies.

And that would be Sintec, I guess? Yeah, Sintec. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Okay. Well, that's a, it's a, it's a great project. really interesting setup. Thank you very much for, for sharing it. - You're welcome... I hope I hope you have lots of luck in the next... well, you do well in the next few months as you ramp up and get deeper into the market and look forward to, to hearing from you again. So good, good luck with the future, and thank you for presenting sh- Cimsa America's gray grinding plant. Thank you so much. Thanks for the opportunity, and we're fully production, in production with 100% capacity utilization. Everything is going good.

And thanks again for this opportunity on behalf of Cimsa. Thank you. Fantastic. Okay, good to hear. thank you, Irfan. Thank you. All right. So let's let's move on now to something a little bit more specific. we're gonna hear from Klaus Faffeneder from RUUD in Germany. RUUD's a, a famous chain company, and Klaus is one of the leaders of the management team there. RUUD Chain stands for innovative strength and technical expertise in drive, lifting, and conveyor technology. He he... Klaus drives the strategic development of the company forward with a clear focus on quality, safety, and international market presence.

With his involvement, RUUD is continuously strengthening its position as a reliable partner for industrial mechanical engineering and conveying technology. applications worldwide. I'm gonna share Klaus's slides, if you give me just a second. it's been... We've had some technical glitches here, but I think if I just pull this up now for you we should be good to go. Klaus, if you would tell me you can see the slides and I will move them forward on your instruction. Okay. So thank you very much for, for having us here at this thing. And, and yeah, my name is Klaus Pfaffenet. I'm, I'm in charge of one of the four divisions in, in RUT.

RUT consists of four profit centers, and here you can see the Island of Peace which is... Oh, that's a bit, a little bit quick. Yeah. And, and the Island of Peace, which is our head office, we are there for around a hundred and fifty years. We celebrated that last year. and the group, the whole group as I said, consists of four profit centers. Biggest is Sling and Lashing Systems. May- You may already notice the pink chains somewhere in the world. Then second is Conveyor and Drive Technology, which I'm responsible for. Then we have Tire Chains, which is divided into tire protection chains, which is in, in quarries, which is in steel mills and many other installations, and snow chains.

And the last and smallest division is furniture, outdoor furniture, which comes from wire processing. So the group has more or less two hundred and fifty million revenues, and as we are always trying to be close to our clients we have thirty manufacturing plants all over the, the, the world and around fifty sales offices that we control. on top of that, we also have partners that, that do sales with us. But in total, the group consists of around a hu- seventeen hundred people working for us. So now if, if we look now for next, next one. Yeah. Here we are, Conveyor and Drive.

Conveyor Systems, you can see on the left side the, the, the core business of Conveyor and Drive, which is bulk material handling. it's, it's cement, it's fertilizer, and also coal and ash, so everything that's around bulk handling. Out of this was derived drive technology for transmission purposes. the biggest sector here is the offshore industry. You see that vessel there and the harbor installations because round link chains as a transmission means are always favorable if there is a corrosive or, or dirty environment. Yeah. Then we have mold handling, which is a smaller sector, and waste chains, which is also, a, a quite important part of our business. So please then next slide.

So what makes bulk conveying hard and, and complicated? next slide, please. you see as you, I guess, already know, it's abrasive materials like clinker, limestone slag, and others that drive an, an accelerated wear. We have high temperatures and thermal cycling throughout the production processes, and in many cases, we also have moisty or sticky materials that cause carrybacks, plugging, or overflow in, in systems. So the variable feed conditions in many cases also create misalignment if you have two chain strengths if you go with two strength- chain strengths. If shock loads and all that could easily create downtimes, which are quite expensive. Now please, let's see the next next two slides.

So our product range for bulk materials handling, you will see in the next slide are all types of conveyors in this field. we are manufacturing these conveyors in, in Germany, in, in India, in Brazil, in Australia, and in Poland, so we always try to be close to, to our customers and do also quite a lot of engineered solutions and retrofits in case a plant is, is already operational for five, six, seven years. So what we do is, is then bucket elevator, trough chain conveyors, apron feeders, but also complete de-ashing systems if you look at the, the coal-fired power industry or, or other incineration systems. So that's, that's the scope of supply we are typically in.

Yeah, if you go on the ne- to the next slide, you see that's these are parts that we manufacture here in our head office. So most of the, the, the chain elements and, and transmission parts are coming from our plant here in the head office. But the conveyor manufacturing and the system systems are done locally in, in, in these markets, as I described.So if we look at the, at the next slide, then you see a typical setup, for instance, for a a bucket elevator. And we've in this... we are in this market for more than seven decades now, so there's quite a big bit of experience with especially difficult materials to, to handle or to convey. And if we then go to the next slide, please. Yeah.

One of our expertises is, for instance, in case customer is, is sticking or relying on round stealing chain, so we have quite a lot of different chains in here, and I just want to highlight that there are several different kinds of materials chains that we manufacture. most of them are case hardened, so there's a, a, a long expertise with us for the heat treatment and especially the material that we use. Some of the materials we also have patents on, so that we can get, for instance, at a very deep level of carburizing or case hardening depth. So which i- and nevertheless have a, a, a tough core.

So this is one of our expertises here in the head office to provide chains that fit to any purpose. So depending on what the customer would like to do with it, whether it's a, a scra-scraper conveyor or a bucket elevator, so especially in, in the fertilizer industry, round stealing chains have a strong presence still. but we do also central chains, where we come to the next slides. So there's in the next slides, there's an explanation about case hardening depth and carburizing depth, but you can read that and look into that after the presentation because I think this would now be too much information on the spot. So then please go to the, the next slide to look at...

you can jump, I guess, the next three slides already. Yeah. There are two bucket elevators that we do in our plants. in several plants, we do different types of, of bucket elevators, but basically these are the three main types. Eighty-five percent, if you look at the world market, are standard bucket elevators with a, with a discharge. it's difficult to read for me, so I'm going down there. With a gravity discharge. And then we have the conical bucket elevator, also with gravity discharge, the second version, but this represents only, I would say, ten percent in the, in the world market. And the last one is with a center discharge.

all three have different abilities, different pros and cons, but all three of are done in our factories, depending on the demand of the customer. Yeah. Then please to, to next slide. Yeah. What we use then for traction and fastening systems, so we don't only... we do not only use round link chains, but we do also use central chains, because central chain, you only have one chain. And for, for high performance bucket elevators, we use now for many years also central chains. And did recent, most recently also new developments in this sector in order to serve the market needs here. So if you can go to the next slide, please. So conveying capacities.

There's an overview of conveying capacities in a table. well, we can go from, from anything that's, that's quite easy. Let's start with the olive transportation down to clinker in a high-speed bucket elevator. So all these types and all the, the makes are, are... we are familiar with, and we have quite a lot of experience and systems in the market already that we're looking after.

So then I would like to, to have a few words on, on our new central chain that has been developed lately because in the past, we had a central chain that was easily installed and assembled with two people without any tools, where now we, we have additional systems that has to be assembled together with a, with a hydraulic system. But this is quite similar to the systems that are already in the marketplace. So now with this development, we, we closed the gap in our portfolio and we now sell all types of central chains in, in the... and serving the cement industry there. There you see a, a summary of the products we, we offer in this field.

it starts with the RU40Uh, which has a breaking strength of, of four hundred kilonewton, and it ends up with the RU two hundred V, which ends up with two thousand. Oh, no, let's go. Two thousand kilonewton. So we've done with this... With the last one, we've done the bucket elevator going up to more than a hundred meters and conveying quite a lot of, of, of material up there. So all of them are in operation already. And let's do-- let's have a, a view on, on the next slide. So engineering and support for our customers is not only done through our head office in Germany, it's also done through our...

For instance, if you look at South America, it's done through Brazil and now we have there a, a strong foothold in, in Mogi das Cruzes, which is in the, in the east of Brazil. And from there, we serve almost all countries in South America as well, not only with spare parts, but also with new builds. All in all the, the five plants that manufacture conveyor technology are providing several hundreds of, of conveyor systems every year into the market. Then there's Australia, which serves also Southeast Asia. then there's India that s-serves South Asia. And we also try now to, to bring in conveyors from Poland into other European markets.

But our scope of supply is not only with design, it's also consulting. So our engineers go inside and listen to the, the, the problems the service guys would tell them. And then we try together with the customer to improve the system, because there's a lot of systems that, that run there. And for changes in the, in the portfolio, for changes in production, maybe the plant has now to other goals in, in productivity. So then we are quite happy to support customers with that. So if we look then to the case studies, there's just two small case studies. One is a bunker discharge. At that time with this project, the customer already had an existing system with a multi-strand conveyor.

And the problem there was that he had always chain wear, extreme chain wear, because he was using a mining chain, which is a, a through-hardened chain, so very little hardness on the surface. And so the, the problem was always that the whole chain system was floating and, and rocking up, and therefore, he had frequent stoppages and blockages, and, and the system was very often not in operation, and he had to repair it on a frequent basis. So the solution was to bring in a chain that had a case hardening, but still had a strong breaking strength, nice breaking strength.

And we designed a special scraper that helped to clean the surface always, and also on the sides to avoid that the, the whole system was floating from one side to the other. And through this, we could reduce the wear, and especially the guy could, could operate the system for a year and then look into it for a day or two and then run for another year, which gives-- took away a lot of headache. During-- In the past, he had to, to look at it every eight weeks. So if we then go for the second case study. This was when you look at the specs, very often you get information, okay, the material is like this, the mo-moisture is like this, and it's not sticky.

And then after three months in operation, customer reports, okay, the si-lump size is bigger, it's wet, and it's extremely sticky, so it, it doesn't discharge. And so the buckets are always spilled, and he had frequent shutdowns. And for-- the most important thing is he did not achieve the conveying capacity he needed to have. And so the solution was we changed the way the bucket is, is equipped. So we brought in the, the buckets, and we had a feature inside with a rubber bottom. And the rubber bottom, we, we, we came to that solution many years ago in, in Brazil. And it turns out that it helps quite and helped to remove quite a lot of problems.

And so now we have a continuous and trouble-free operation here, and the conveying performance is achieved. So that was also took a big headache of the customer. These two samples show how our approach is to the customer. we do this with, with the, with the drive system. We do this with many things. it's always looking at the, at the issues and then how to provide it, so to improve it, so.So that was in a short, in a short a little bit what we are doing. Thank you very much Thank you very much for that really interesting presentation.

And as you've shown in the, in the case, case studies you can come acro-across a lot of unexpected problems and you need a, an engineering solution which you, you're able to, to provide with the expertise of so many years. what, what is the most common product that you're, that you're moving in a, in a cement plant? Is it... I mean, you've got gypsum here. are you working on... with clinker as well? - Yeah... cement? What, what is the - The most important thing is, is bucket elevator. Yeah. And, and you can ha-handle them sort of really abrasive products hot products as well. So, you know, clinker- Yeah... coming out of the of the kiln as well and from the clinker. Yes. Yeah.

And is there, is there a kind of in, in the environment, in the cement plant, is that a lot more difficult to other environments, other industry applications that you, that you see? Yeah. Like it's not one- There's other industrial applications in steel factories, for instance- Right... that are much more challenging. Yeah. Okay. And so, well, unless there are any questions we're very grateful for that presentation. I think it's it's a, it's a really interesting topic, and to see how you come across these solutions as well is really, really informative. So Claus, thank you very much for that presentation. That's Claus- Mm-hmm... from RUED in Germany.

hope to have you on again to show other, other solutions that that you're pioneering in this, in this respect. So well, we're gonna move on now to our third speaker. I'm very pleased to welcome Melissa from Silo Connect, who is the digital transformation engineer. Silo Connect is a product of, of Nanolike. Melissa has a background in electronics and IoT. She specializes in connecting industrial operations with digital technologies, leveraging IoT, data analytics, and process optimization to drive efficiency and sustainability.

Having worked with partners and clients across several countries, her current focus is on how artificial intelligence can create new margins beyond the plant, reshaping cement supply chains through smarter data-informed decision making. Well, there's a... that's a pretty interesting introduction there, so we're fascinated to hear what you have to tell us today. Please share your slides, Mel-Melissa, and the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Thomas. I'm really pleased to be here with you today. so as you said, I would be more focusing on digitalizing the last mile, so meaning optimizing road bulk material and links through intelligent silo visibility.

So I would like to start with a metaphor for this presentation. So in the cement industry, we often focus on the heavy bones and muscles so the cement plants the aeromix and precast plants, and also the logistic. But if we look at a global operation, cement... Oops, sorry. Cement is the lifeblood, so it needs to flow from the production organs to the distribution limbs without interruption. But the brain generally, so the logistic team, does not have much visibility on the muscle than the organs because they receive call from time to time, and they try to do their best with unfortunately late information. So what are the challenges of the bloodstream of the cement industry?

So a circulatory system is only healthy if the flow is constant. So in bulk handling, a stockout at a terminal or an overfill at a silo, the lack of drivers, is a vascular blockage. So it stop the entire body from functioning, and then you have cost thousands of dollars high logistic costs. So it's kind of a emergency surgery, I would say. so it would be rushed deliveries, and it could be also lost orders to competitors if you are not able to deliver on time they are switching to another supplier. So by digitalizing the last mile, we are just measuring weight. We are monitoring the heartbeat of your supply chain to prevent those blocks before they happen.

So to move material from one side to the other or from one organ to the other, you need more than just a pipe. You need a nervous system, and that is how Silo Connect acts. It acts as nerve endings on your silos. Why? Because we install an equipment on the leg of the aeromix silos to measure the level inside them, and we share them with the brain, which is the logi-logistic team. And so the brain, the logistic team, knows the exact status of the inventory in each silo, allowing the circulatory system of trucks and ships to move with perfect synchronization.

So by putting an equipment on your customer silo, you extend your nervous system all the way to the fingertips of the supply chain, and that is what we call digitalizing the last mile.So Silo Connect monitors the pulse ensuring that the cement flows where it's needed and when it's needed. But what are the characteristic of a strong nervous system? What we need to, to have in order to have a strong bloodstream? So first we... So we need three characteristic, and the first one would be reliability. We don't want any manual errors and we also want real-time data. We don't want any delayed info. We want to have the data right away, and we want it to be accessible.

You want it to have at your hand right away, so no risky inspection. Because currently what we see in the cement industry is that there are manual measurements in some countries. So for some of you, you may have seen some tennis balls or some hammer on the silos, so there is of course high risk of constant inaccuracies. there could be issues also with batch, batching system, so cement going and cement going out and doing some calculations. So unfortunately, you have approximation that disrupts your production system. you could have also safety hazards, so physical silo checks are risky and imprecise.

And of course, sometimes you have delayed data because if you go at the top of the silo and you do the measurement with a string or doing with a tennis ball, then you need to transfer the data to another person doing a call, et cetera. And so the data is outdated by the t- the time it reach, it reaches you. So let's give your supply chain the pulse it deserves. So that is what we offer with Silo Connect. So here on the left here, you can see the full system, so the full equipment. So you have the sensor just right here, so it's two holes, two screws, and it's a strain gauge. So basically we measure the deformation on the leg of the silo, and we translate that into weight.

Then of course it's connected to an antenna just right here, so we can transfer the data instantly directly to your desk. So this is the first step, the measurement. Then we are using artificial intelligence algorithm. Why? Because each silo has a different behavior, and we need to learn this beha- this behavior to adapt the data. so the behavior is changing due to structural to the structure of the silo. it could be also the temperature, the sunlight, and many other things. Then after the the analysis with the artificial intelligence algorithm, you have the platform where you can see directly the data. So you have many information on the platform.

You are able to see the real-time fill levels, the quantity of free space inside silos, the day by day consumption history based on many months the average and maximum consumption, and you are able to evaluate the remaining stock duration. Of course, you don't want to check the platform every morning. You want to have actionable alerts, so that is why we put automatic and customable alerts. So just to explain a little bit more the digitalization process. So as I said, first you have the visibility, so twenty-four/seven visibility over the stocks of your customers. Then you could implement what we call the alerts.

So basically when you have enough free space to send a truck, you receive an alert by email. And then the goal that we like to achieve with our customers, it's what we call auto order, meaning then when there is trust between us, you, and your customers we can connect directly to your ERP, and when there is enough free space to send a truck, the order is directly created inside the ERP, so you are able to dispatch the truck. So just a little bit on the installation. So it has been designed to be non-intrusive with no cable work. So you are able to see the sensor just right here, and you have the installation here. So as I said, so it's in external installation.

It's installed on the leg of the silo. We only need generally to equip only one leg and we take care of the network and everything. So it works on batteries. the life of the batteries are up to two years, and you are able to change them by yourself. It's classic AA batteries and you don't have to go through us to do that. So case studies are always better than a thousand words of the solution, so here are a few. So the first one is the example of Lafarge France. So this case is interesting because they wanted to shift the deliveries later in the day. So you may recognize yourself in in this situation.

So generally the cement production or the logistic of the cement plants receive calls of the customer later during the day, and then they start sending the trucks in in the morning. So a lot of you may know of the seven AM morning rush and so we wanted to shift that. So here you can see before the solution, and here is after. How we were able to do so, because as you receive the call later during the day, maybe Silo Connect is able to detect free space before a customer's call. So maybe you were able to...

y- you are able to detect this free space at two PM and send the truck the same day and not wait for the next day to do so.So with the solution, you are able to flatten the curve of deliveries. You can prevent shortages. You can reduce idle time at the RMX plants. You can prio-prioritize the right plant at the right time. And so as you don't need as much truck in the morning and you can flatten the curve, you can also, if you are going through third-party companies third-party truck companies, you can negot-- renegotiate the contracts with them to lower your logistic costs. Another example with KPI, this time for the logistic team. So here is the example of Holcim Spain.

so they currently have more than sixty sensors installed, but you can reach those KPIs, KPIs with less equipment, I would say. And here are the KPIs. So first, last-minute orders. So they were able to decrease those by four percent. they managed to decrease the average transport planning lead time as well by twenty percent. they decreased... They -- sorry, increased the average volume delivered per truck per month. How? Because when they received the call, they were sending the truck, but there were not enough space to deliver the full truck.

Now, with the solution, you are able to see if there is enough space or not, so you can send the truck at the right time, and you are able to deliver the full truck. And so they increase the average volume delivered per truck. And the last KPI was the frequency of silos stocked out, so they managed to decrease that. However, you can also use the system to help your sales team. So this is the example of what they-- what Lafarge implemented in France. So they implemented what we call VMI. So it's Vendor Managed Inventory. Basically, you take care of the inventory of your customers for them. So how does that work? So first, the silo-- the level inside the silo drops under a certain threshold.

Then it's detected by Silo Connect. It notifies you and your customers that a refill is needed. An order is directly created inside the ERP, and then the truck is dispatched. So with that, they are able to sell convenience to their customer because the customer doesn't have to check their inventory anymore. So basically, it's a premium service that you are giving to your customers. Also, as you automate the process of ordering you are able to take in more orders if new customers are coming, and so you are able to sell more with the same team.

basic-basically, with VMI, you can let your customer focus on building and not reordering, and you can focus your logistic on customer service, and so building trust and loyalty with your own customers. So the last one, because we have a lot of question, of course, on cost and ROI. So this is a great example with Mexico. so the cost of the solution for them was fifty cents per ton of cement, but they were able to make great benefits on other departments to take their cost for them. So they improve... They had great impact on logistic, on the fleet optimization, and on the commercial impact as well.

So for the logistic, they managed to save time on order management as I showed earlier, and they reduced incident. So they increased their transport efficiency by twenty-four percent. For the fleet optimization, they reduced their truck fleet, and they reduced their truck waiting time, so they were able to renegotiate their contract with their third parties. And so they decreased by ten percent the transport cost per ton, and they reduced by fifty-one percent the idle time at plant. On the commercial impact, you are able to do two things.

So recover lost sales, because if you have too much emergency the same day, maybe you are not able to deliver one or two trucks to the customers, and so this customer is going to the competition. and also, you are able to acquire new customer thanks to that, because you can sell that, as I said, as a premium service, and you have a differentiator to your competitors, and you are able to use Silo Connect as a sales weapon. And so we did a, a little simulation, and if you manage to increase ten percent of your deliveries, you to your customers, so you can say, for example, to your customer, "I'm going to install something at your plant.

I'm going to take care of your inventory for you, but in exchange give me ten percent of deliveries to me and not to my competitor." And so you are able to make benefits out of that. just a little bit more on the cost. So generally, the average cost for the solution in different countries is around twenty cents per ton of cement. So basically, what we did, we take the average tonnage o-of cement delivered per silo, and we divided that by the cost of Silo Connect. So depending on the the country where, where you are, the cost is of course different, and we can evaluate that together before implementing the solution.

So to conclude, we all know the incredible engineering at the plant, the muscle, then the bones of the cement industry. But as we move material from one site to the other or from one organ to the other, we must remember that cement is the lifeblood of our global infrastructure.So if your handling system are the vessels then Silo Connect is a pulse monitor. And without real-time visibility, your circulatory system is at risk of clogs, so you have costly emergencies, wasted fuel, and dangerous manual checks. And so by digitalizing the last mile, we don't measure on the silos, we give your supply chain a nervous system.

So let's stop guessing and start sen-sensing, and let's ensure that the lifeblood of your business flows efficiently, sustainably, and safely. for those who want to find out if your supply chain has a healthy pulse, feel free to scan the QR code, and we can estimate the ROI for your installation, and thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much Melissa. That was a great presentation and a very compelling one showing especially the inventory management service. It's it's really shows just just how much you can save through optimizing your processes.

I guess if you're a cement plant or a terminal like Irfan's at Chimsa, you're, you're sending bulk cement from that plant to maybe ready-mix facilities, so the ready-mix facilities could benefit from this technology. But also, the ready-mixes then the bulk may be also going to a plant site, a construction site. is it, is it also construction sites as well as ready-mix facilities that the product is aimed at? So mainly we focus on cement, so it would be mostly for ready-mix plants. sometimes we can help, I would say, construction site because they have mobile silos. They need cement the closest to the where they are doing the construction, and so we can help with that as well. a few questions.

One was on what sensing technology do you use? but you've covered that. It, it's not load cells, it's your, your special technology that measures the well, the, the, the warp on the, on the leg which is un-unseeable, but very clever technology. But I think the real magic happens in the, in the, in the cloud, right? And, and in the software that is that is processing all this information. - Yes. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. The, the technology is kind of old actually. It's a strain gauge, so it exists from the beginning of the world I would say.

And so we, we really need to analyze the data and adapt it to the silos, and it's really important to have this brick of technology because just having the technical or hardware part is not enough. You need the full package to have the m- the most accuracy, I would say, on your data. a question from Ahmed Elattabani. He's asking, "Is there a need to calibrate the system from time to time?" and another question from John Collis, "What, what is the accuracy of the silo leg deformation sensing technology" we've just spoken about? he's also asking about recalibration. So can you talk about that? Yeah. Sure. So indeed, we need to calibrate the system.

As I said, we need to learn the behavior of the silo. So basically we ask your help, I would say, for two weeks. we would need the deliveries and also the levels each morning. You can enter it on the mobile app, so it takes two minutes every morning for two weeks. and then the system is calibrated. we generally don't recalibrate the the sensor, but some time to time we could ask some measurements, but it's really few, I would say. and for the accuracy of the system, the worst case scenario is that we are 10% of the capacity of the silo. it's a worst case, but we could go to 5 to 3% depending on the silo, of course. Very good. well, thank you again very much for that presentation.

very intriguing product. 24% efficiency, 10% reduction in transport costs, a-and just 15 cents a ton. So that's, that's excellent. if you need to get in touch with Melissa, there's her details. we'll be sending out all the slides from all the presentations by email after the webinar concludes. Look at your inbox or check your spam as well in case it's gone astray. But for now thank you to Melissa, and we're gonna move now to our next, our final speaker of today. I'm very pleased to, to welcome Mindaugas Dalilyte from LINTOS, who is an industrial and analytical technology enthusiast with over 20 years of experience in the field.

He earned his doctorate in chemistry from Vilnius University in 2007, and currently serves as head of sales at LINTOS, a manufacturer of online elemental analyzers based on LIBS, which stands for Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy. so I hope I've got that right. Mindaugas, if you'd like to share your slides and the floor is yours. You got it absolutely correct. thank you for your kind introduction. It's a pleasure to be here with you all today, and let me just share my slides and continue with our presentation and things that we need we want to show you today.So a second. Are you seeing the slides? We can see them. Thank you. Just a second. Oh, there was some lag.

Just a second, I'll go back. Okay. So we are located in Vilnius, Lithuania the country famous for laser technology, so that's why we build these online elemental analyzers based on laser technology. So first machines were installed back in two thousand and eight, and since then we supplied many of those to various mineral industries. the technology proves to be universal, and it's it proved to be useful for, for online analysis of any mineral material. so when it... we come to online analysis, the first question is why to choose online analysis instead of laboratory analysis. So with laboratory analysis there are two problems.

So first problems is that we're missing information in be-between the sampling points. For example, we took a sample here, then we took a sample there, and we don't have any information what was happening in between. And another problem is even bigger, that it takes time to get those results, and often the results arrive too late to make timely process adjustments. So only online analyzers allow us to s-s-to see the full picture, and most importantly, to take action now while we can still fix any quality issues and not to send bad material further down the process and not to send it f-for loading, for shipping to the customer, because any of those deviations means financial losses.

So LIBS, which again stands for Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, wasn't the first technology which allowed to, to do elemental analysis in real time. the technology is based on neutron activation or X-rays were used a long time. however, these methods suffer from many limitations. So first of all, obviously, they are dangerous because of harmful radiation, and there is y-y-you need to put a lot of effort. there is a lot of paperwork involved just to get the permissions. Also, they are very expensive to, to maintain and just to keep them running. And there are some limitations related to analytical performance.

For example, with the neutron activation-based technologies, you cannot measure magnesium in the presence of calcium. The moisture analysis is very inaccurate. You cannot measure f- free lime in clinker and so on and so on. So LIBS doesn't have all those limitations. And let's talk how it works. So inside the analyzer, there is a pulse laser, and the beam of laser is guided via optical system directly onto moving material stream on the conveyor, and each pulse creates plasma. This plasma emits light. Light is collected, processed to yield LIBS spectra. In Li- in LIBS spectra, each element has specific set of peaks, like fingerprints.

So if you see fin-fingerprints for iron, you know that it's there. If you see fingerprints for magnesium, you know it's there, and so on. And the intensity of those peaks is proportional to the concentration, so you just calibrate intensity to the concentration. Later, you can use it for online analysis. For process control, you wouldn't need to look at this part. You will be receiving in your-- to your plant control system the numerical values of the, of the concentration of elements and time charts. And you can use it right away for real-time process adjustments like sorting, blending dosing, and so on. So let me show how it looks in real life. Here we have a video.

So the analyzer sits above the conveyor, and material is, is moving, and we have this blinking light here. So these are the laser pulses being applied onto moving material stream, and this is where the analysis happen. You can see that the, the person is walking next to operational analyzer, so it illustrates the safety of this technology. There is not any harmful radiation. This wouldn't be po-possible with most of other technologies. And the laser light is safe. You can put, for example, your hand on the l- on the laser beam, and you wouldn't get hurt. We have another example with material with which comes as much larger particles.

Here, the particles are up to one hundred and fifty millimeters. And as you can see, we have again the blinking light, and this is again the laser pulses are being applied onto moving material. And the the bottom of the analyzer is here, and you can see the, the analyzer is positioned much further away just to illustrate that we can accommodate to any conveyor, depth, dimensions, angle, and so on. now people often when they see this, they ask, how does it happen that the apparently small laser spot generates the results which are representative for much larger material stream?

And the trick is not, not to use data from one measurement, from one analysis point, but to collect and average many of those. So as the analyzer sits on the top, material is moving, and laser pulses are being applied, we get many, many sampling points a-along the conveyor. And we collect typically around a thousand of those and average to get statistically representative results. to make sure that you are getting correct readings, it's not complicated. Just collect the sample, do analysis in the laboratory, and see how the results compare. So i-i-it takes typically around three minutes to, to collect this data.

It means around every three minutes, you will be getting update of the elemental composition in your plant control system. now let's move to some examples, some case studies. So sl- let's start from limestone stockpile formation.So the task was to sort the, the s- the limestone based on the concentration of MgO and the, the concentration of other impurities. so the challenge was that the, those traditional technologies do not work for MgO as XRF can measure it all-- can't measure it at all i-in real-time, while in the PG&A, for example, the signal of magnesium is blocked by the signal of calcium. And as you can see in LIBS spectra, the signals of magnesium and calcium are clearly separated.

They are not overlapping and clearly visible. Now, as well as the signals of other elements which are present as residues i-i-in, in the material like silica, iron, alumina, and so on. So this of course allows to optimize stockpile and ut-utilize lower grade ore by blending. another example is quite unique. It's analysis of free lime in clinker in real-time. So typically, a residue of free lime in clinker is measured by in laboratory by wet chemistry or X-ray diffraction techniques. but unfortunately, this causes the delays, and th-this, this doesn't allow for timely adjustments of kiln conditions.

So if we look at LIBS spectra of clinker, we see many, many peaks, many, many signals of calcium-based compounds. So since the clin-clinker is quite complex mix, which has free lime, has calcium-bearing materials and various calcium silicates, calcium aluminates, we get many corresponding signals. So that's how we can measure calcium oxides otherwise free lime, i-in the presence o-of other calcium-bearing materials in clinker. And here are the comparison of online analyzer results with the laboratory. So these are the same results just represented in a little bit different way.

this is the simple overlay with this reddish line being online analyzer results and this blue line laboratory results. And you can see the match is very nice. And again, here are the same results just represented at s- XY scatter with some statistical data. So this obviously allows to eliminate quality issues reduce the undesired amount of free lime, and a-allows optimization of all these burning conditions and reduce the energy consumption. In addition to analysis of free lime in real-time mode, simultaneously in the same run concentrations of individual elements can be analyzed. So, you know, those typical elements: calcium, silica, alumina, iron, magnesium, sodium, potassium, and so on.

And in addition to elemental composition, i- the compositional parameters can be measured as well, like this lime saturation factor, silica ratio, alumina ratio, alite, belite, and so on. So, and these parameters are not calculated from formulas, they are measured directly from spectral data. another example is moisture analysis. So many of other techniques cannot measure moisture. So for example, PG&A, they use microwave add-on, and unfortunately the accuracy of microwave add-on for moisture analysis is, is, is terrible. It's twenty, thirty percent. while LIBS can measure moisture with the same level of accuracy and the same go as elements.

And here we have a table with some statistical data. And a- indeed, as you can see, the m- the accuracy for moisture is in the same level as for other elements. And th-this was, of course as an example on raw meal. And final example, analysis of limestone residue i-in lime after calcination. So it's not really cement production, but similar materials, it's similar related industry. So lime, which is calcium oxide, is produced by cal-calcining limestone, which is calcium carbonate. So under the heating, the molecule of CO2 detaches and evaporates, yeah, and the calcium oxide remains.

So to control if the reaction took place fully, if, if the residue of limestone is within the allowed limits, is again, analysis is needed, yeah. And with the laboratory, if, if again, with taking samples and doing analysis in the laboratory, they have again the same problem of the, of the delay. so LIBS was demonstrated to, to, to be able to do this analysis in real-time, and obviously, which allows to stabilize lime quality reduce waste generation reduce energy consumption and CO2 emission levels. so LIBS technology is very, very easy to maintain. It's a very low maintenance cost technique. So mostly you have to do two procedures periodically on on site.

So change air cleaning filters and clean optical window at the bottom of the analyzer. Now, as you can imagine, those are not expensive procedures, and they-- these are not complicated. So set of filters costs a few hundred euro. cleaning optical window is free. It's like cleaning your optical glass-glasses, and you don't need our engineers coming to do this every time on site. we train your staff during commissioning, and they can continue doing it by themselves, eliminating the expenses which are otherwise needed for, for traveling and, and for, for the services of certified engineers. So this makes all this -Maintenance of the, of the analyzer very, very low.

So to summarize, LIBS is a safe technique with no any harmful radiation, and no permissions and paperwork is needed. with low, very low maintenance expenses. capable of analyzing light and heavy elements and some other parameters in real time, and is capable of analyzing solids, dry solids, wet solids, slurries, and brines. yeah, so if you have a, a task which other, others cannot cover, or if you want to leave the radiation management hassles behind, so let's talk. Thank you very much Mindaugas. That's a, a really compelling presentation. very good technology, very clearly described. were... There are a few questions just kind of technical. what's your primary truth source for calibration?

and also can you show a few examples of bias ranges versus calcium silica, et cetera, under real plant conditions? I think you had one table there, but we've moved over, over that. Could you speak to those questions? Yes. So calibration is done on process material. So while the analyzer is running and c-collecting the, the analyzer data, analyzer spectral responses at the same time, you can collect those samples, bring to laboratory and, and do analysis there, and then just to use this data to, to calibrate the analyzer. This gives the best results, yes, to cal- by calibrating on process material. Now, if we go back to some table, for example here it's a analysis of raw meal.

Yeah, so you can see, you can see some statistical data here. So... And another question I had in mind when you, you were describing these different process, measuring processes have you looked at alternative fuels as well? alternative fuels we, we, we don't have the installation on alternative fuels, and possibly it can be quite challenging because I would expect a lot of variation in, in the source of alternative fuel. So I don't know if, if, if it's the, the best technique, but, but we can talk. Yeah. Yeah. is the collected data impacted by airborne particles, especially in an underground mine environment? no. So dust is not a problem. i- in many, many plants, where they operate, no.

For example, i- if we go to this photo, not here, right here. So for example in this environment is, it is a extreme, extreme amount of dust, yeah? And still we, we, we, we operate successfully. So the, the reason is that the, the, the laser is focused. It's, it at some specific height, yeah? So we have the, the system which follows the, the loading of the material, the height. and so the analytical laser would know where to focus. So the, let's say the, the dust in between the analyzer and the material is not excited. It's not analyzed, yeah, and it d- doesn't affect the, the results, yeah, so. And what, what, what was the other question? one was about the dust. okay.

Well, that, that was it. That was the question. - Oh, okay... there, there's another question around the, the size of the material being analyzed. Is there any limitation? any minimum size that or that, that you can that you can analyze? so in general there is no limitation. so as you saw in the video, we had one video with very, very fine powder, yeah? So we can ana- ana- analyze it. And another example was the material with one hun- up to 150 millimeters, yeah? So clearly we can operate at least in, in this range, but, but maybe even more.... Yeah. Okay. there are a few more questions coming through.

how do you integrate the the measurements with the legacy system or is it, or directly to a PL- a PLC? yes. So by default, we use a Modbus TCP IP communication, but i- if you have some other communication, even analog, if you have 420 milliamps analog we, we can just add this communication module to, to, to our system. So we can connect to any system. Fantastic. Well, I think you've given us a great overview. thank you for all the questions as well. That's really- Thank you... kept the discussion going. It's a pleasure to be here. wonderful. So thank you Mindaugas from LINSYS in Lithuania. and to all our speakers. that's, that's all for today.

thanks to Melissa from Silo Connect Klaus from Ruud, and Irfan calling in from CIMPSA in the Americas in Houston. it's been a, a great session and we look forward to next month. in the meantime don't forget we'll be in Bangkok in June, so go to SEMNET, have a look for the for the Cemtech page and and sign up if you can, if you can make it out there in June. but for now, thank you to all our speakers. Thanks for joining. Thanks for the questions. See you next time. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.