Cemtech Live Webinar: Innovative approaches to cement plant maintenance

Hello and happy New Year to everyone logging in today to this webinar. Welcome to the start of 2025 and to the first emec Live webinar for the year. My name is Thomas Armstrong, managing editor of International Cement Review, and it's a pleasure to welcome you here today to this webinar. like I said, we'll be holding a, a webinar on the first Wednesday of every month and we're gonna be showcasing the LA latest advances from across our industry promoting best available technologies so that you, the producers can can achieve the manufacturing excellence that you are seeking to attain. So this is our first webinar, but there's a full program. Go and check it out on cnet.com.

next month we'll be focusing on cutting edge digital technologies. but quickly a word about us international Cement Review. We are organizing these webinars and have been publishing our magazine monthly for the last 35 years. each edition offering a wealth of information on the global cement sector. you'll find detailed articles reporting on the application of leading edge technologies from across the whole manufacturing process. A reminder that all subscribers receive a free copy of a handbook. one is the Cement Plant Operations Handbook.

it's a fantastic reference for any of you working day-to-day in cement plants or thinking about expanding or upgrading, modernizing your works and looking for the basic information a reliable reference for how cement is produced that comes free with a subscription to International Cement Review as does the Cement Plant environmental handbook. so be sure if you are here watching this webinar, then International Cement Review is the magazine for you. please do take a look online and subscribe. A quick reminder of our activities coming up in a month's time or so. I think if you are quick, you'll still get the early bird rate. it's our annual Middle East and Africa conference.

This will take place in Dubai at the wonderful obelisk Hotel. a fantastic venue for this conference. we've plant tour we'll be visiting Cemex grinding facility in Dubai and as usual an exhibition featuring 30 or so of the most cutting edge international equipment suppliers for the cement industry and plenty of networking of course culminating in our glorious gala dinner. So if you haven't been to a emec, this is a good place to start. A good place to begin the year with your first conference and in-person conference. But for now, I'm going to introduce the company's participating in today's webinar on plant maintenance.

And I'm very happy to have with us representatives from Dion Corp in the us CC Jensen and Denmark and Hasley Racies out of Denmark also. we've a, a, a program featuring just three presentations, but all of them extremely relevant, useful, I hope and informative. in fact, we could almost call this an alternative fuels webinar. given that two of them are really addressing problems that arise from burning alternative fuels, sorry whether that's blockages and buildup in your system or it's deterioration of ref factories. But we've got solutions for both of those from Hasley and Dion.

And we also have good old fashioned plant maintenance all about oil flow filtration, lubrication solutions that will help your assets produce better for longer. So that's all coming up, but right now I'd like to introduce our first speaker. many of you know Jeff Shelton from his many years in our industry. he's worked for various companies across the board in the area of maintenance, but is now vice President Ofra on call. as I said, he is experienced in the cement power paper and environmental sectors.

before joining sion, Jeff held senior leadership roles such as managing director at PowerGen at Martin Engineering and Vice President at IGS, where he focused on maintenance and reliability solutions renowned for his technical expertise. Jeff has developed engineered solutions for cement plants to address critical maintenance challenges. In this session, Jeff will discuss cutting edge air can and technology, showcasing how it can enhance operational efficiency, reduce downtime, and support decarbonization efforts by lowering cement plants, carbon footprints. So there's a lot going on here. if I just hand it over to you now, Jeff you please go ahead and share your slides.

and while you are doing that, I will just remind everyone and welcome to everyone who's who, who's logged in from, from many many parts of the world. you can ask questions during the during the webinar by pressing the q and a text button on your toolbar. just type in your question and I will try and review that and ask our speakers to address the, the issues and points that you bring up over the course of the next three presentation. So search out that q and a button and I'll try and bring the questions to our speakers' attention, but for now, how to improve your air canon reliability. over to you, Jeff. Well, thank you for, for the nice things you've said.

And, and I'll say the check is in the mail, but I will tell you that one of the, one of my characteristics is you will talk to few people that are as enthusiastic about air canons as I am, and you'll talk to a few people that, that will actually have the ego that I do. I, I, I think I, I think I'm the catch me out, but that's a benefit to the industry because if I say it, I'll guarantee it. Now, how did you improve air canon reliability? It's really pretty simple. You know, every air cannon manufacturer says the same thing. An air cannon is a simple device, but then how come so many plants don't have the, the, the, the real benefit of, of, of, of, of the cannons?

So we're going to tell you is that if you follow the science and combine following the science with common sense, you will, you will greatly improve your reliability. Now, one of the things is, is that when I first got involved in the cement industry, we were going from the wet process to the dry process. So I know that cement is, is capable of great technical feats, but is it the wet to the dry? Is it small compared to the, the goals of cement is to be carbon neutral by, by 2050 and and to drastically reduce the carbon footprint by 2030. Well, I'm telling you right now that the path to do in 2030 is pretty clear. It's using of alternative fuels, and that will increase the use of air cannons.

This technology revolution is a, is, is, is a welcome for air cannons. And, you know, but I will tell you this, an air cannon is only as good as as as you apply it. And I will say this, and I'll say this several times, air cannons design is typically not the problem. It's how you install it and if you will follow common sense. But often following the science and common sense are the same thing. For instance, the following, the science tells you if you protect your air can from the environment, it's gonna be good. Common sense tells you that. Common sense tells you that if you use as few air cannons as possible, you know, the, the less maintenance, right? I mean, isn't that common sense?

But it's also following the science. But I will tell you this, that one of the things that I think that many, many people don't understand is what it takes to clean in, in these environments. Every application is a little different and you have to be able to change from the operating cycle, the cleaning energy and, and, and all of that to fully get the most from the air cannons. Today, I, we, we, we offer often hear people, how's your air cannons? Oh, they're great. Oh, so you means that you don't water wash your riser, duck and feed shelf. No, no, I do that every year, every, every shift. I'm sorry, but no, well, that means your air cannons aren't cleaning enough. Duh.

I mean, high pressure water washing is a, is is is a safety concern, and it's not really very efficient. I had one catalyst I mean refractory manufacturer. Tell me the best thing I can do to sell catalyst is give somebody a high pressure water washing gun. 'cause it destroys your refractory. Well, you're going, you, you're going to talk a little bit about one of the best refractory there are out there, but they can, you know, we can protect it and make it even better.

But one of the things is, is that, and I'm, and, and, and I'm gonna be a straight shooter, everybody says, whoa, if you use the smaller air that you had fire in your air canon, the, the better it anything over 70% liters is a waste of air, really. So I would say they're not following the science, because science tells you that if you apply enough the more cleaning energy in the air stored in the air tank is cleaning energy, the more cleaning you get. Cleaning is more important than, than than air. But also I'll tell you that you have to look and you follow the sciences that every air cannon that you have that fails stores and, and then fires will leak air.

Every air cannon, my air cannon, their air cannon, every air cannon. But if you eliminate storing the air in the air tank, you eliminate a safety concern and you also eliminate the leaks. I know that I'm not very smart, but I'm smart enough to know that if I don't have air in my air tank, it's not leaking. But then you today is that the nozzles that you guys use are antiquated. They're yesterday's nozzles. Use the nozzle technology that's available today, and you will improve your reliability, your cleaning. In fact, we will offer a three year life guarantee on the nozzles. But now this is a, this is a slide that I like because you see this is a common installation.

In fact, this is directly from a, an, an advertisement. But I go, how do you get to these air cannon? How do you get to these air cannon? How do you know when one fails? My, my opinion is this is an unacceptable installation. If you can't get to it for easy maintenance, then what's it worth? Buying the air can, if it's worth paying the money for the air cannon, it's worth being able to maintain it safely and inexpensively. But what is follow? So you go, well, wait a minute. These are doing it because they follow the science and science tells us the longer the pipe runs, the greater the reduction of pressure of the air blast and the lower the pressure, the lower the peak force. Okay?

Science tells us that is absolutely true, but peak force is the area times the pressure. So did you know that if you, if you have a hundred PSI at a four inch air cannon, it produces, has a potential producing 1,256 pounds of force. But if you have a pressure drop because you locate the, the, the air cannon in a safe location and you lose 50% pressure, A 50 PSIA six inch nozzle has greater peak force at 1,413. So you can, if you follow the science, you can locate the air cannons in a manner that you can easily tell if they're working and you can easily repair 'em. Because I promise you, every air cannon will fail at some point. It's not if it's only when.

Now, of course I've just said what this says, but this is an illustration where, look how easy it is. You see on the right side right here, how easy it is to get to the valve assembly. You don't have to kneel, you don't have to do scaffolding. You can get to it. And, and it's just common sense. The easier and safer any maintenance work can be done, the more frequently it will occur. I believe, and I've said this many, many times, that how do you pick who works on your air cannons? Now it's the guy who came in late, you, it's a punishment because they're hot and they're not, they're high in the air because buildup doesn't cooperate and, and be only inconvenient locations.

You, you gotta put the nozzles where it is. But common sense tells you, and, and, and, and I find that no one has ever disagreed with these four statements. It doesn't matter how powerful your air canon is if it's not working. In other words, reliability is, is a key to cleaning. It's absolutely true. It, but it also doesn't matter how reliable your air canon is. If it's not powerful enough, it's not cleaning. Also, all air canons will fail. The key key is how often do they fail? And all air canon OEMs tell you how simple the air canons are. Then why don't they give them a, a warranty that matches this? Why don't they do that? We will give you a 10 year warranty that I didn't stutter.

I did not stutter. Maybe I did 10 years. Because it is a simple device and if you protect it from the environment, it will last. But all air cannon designs are not the same. A good, a good, you know, but the design is not u usually the problem. The problems usually come in that I've installed it in a, in a, in a bad location. If you look on the right side, how do you get to these air cannons and how do you know if they're working? I would say that's a bad lo location. And then the cleaning energy, which when you fill air in the tank, it's classified as potential energy. When you open the valve and it starts to flow out, it then converts from potential energy to kinetic energy.

So then you, then you also limit the performance of the air cannon with the nozzle design. The traditional fan Jett nozzle, according to CFD studies have will generate only 250 pounds of peak force. In other words, the nozzle is the governor of the air canon. If peak force is truly as important as some say it is, then you have to be able to have a nozzle that will convert the kinetic energy into high peak force. But, you know, we're gonna tell you. And now I, this is a cement seminar, and there I am sneaking in a an SCR on in the coal power. But I want to tell you that this is yesterday's air cannons. Now, this installation, this installation, I own what I say.

I made the recommendations and, and I looked at the guy that when we were replacing this, I go, wouldn't you like to punch the guy in the face who made this, these recommendations? He goes, yes, I would. And I go, well, go ahead, punch me in the face. You see on this right here, these thermal safety shields, which protect the worker when he works on it, but does not protect the air cannon from the environment. They 100% all leak. They all leak, and you expose the guy to safety risk to close them. So this is a very corrosive of a positive pressure. These cannons were shooting off of the, the can, the off of the, the SER and became a danger. And so we replaced it with today's air cannons.

The air cannons located far away. This is the hose that that goes to the air cannon. And you can see it's located in it again. Oh, wait a minute. It's a convenient location. So working can beyond it. And you can also see that we put in front of it a, a, a butterfly valve, which we call the protector valve. So where it's closed off, not the the op, the impact of the operation does not affect the air cannon. 'cause when you open up that protector valve, you're firing and then you're closing it. But if you look here, we, and it's a positive pressure. You have a corrosion zone and it corrodes and, and, and it's a mess. So we, we upgraded it all to, to stainless steel.

So this is a much more reliable system, but it's also more powerful. Watch this video. Now, one of the things that I see on this video, we can, we, we clean a much greater area. This is 40 feet from one end to another. Now. So I am I saying I can clean 40 feet in the cement industry? Absolutely. No, no way. Positively not because when you hit the material, you transfer the energy from the, the air blast to the material. And as the material flies away, there goes part of your cleaning potential. But because of the greater volume, we, we, we can clean three to four times greater area. But one of the things that you'll also see that is how much build buildup is falling down from the, the vast.

It's the pressure pulse, which is cleaning others. Now, if that buildup is sticky, it's not gonna clean. But one of the things is, and I need to to tell you quickly about the, the product is the, the Dion product can offer a 10 year warranty because of the fact that you use standard U cups. The piston in here, the piston is based on an air cylinder design because we use standard industry technologies 'cause we're not smart enough to design something on our own. And so we use that in these U cups that, that are critical. You can buy off the internet, you don't have to come to us, you can buy it off the internet. And we use an air cylinder on air.

Now air cylinders are known to last ten four million cycles. 4 million cycles. So it's not the duty cycle that's gonna cause the maintenance, it's the protecting it from the environment. Now, this is an example of where we installed them. Now you see each of these ports and we run a stainless steel hu ready hose to this is where your air cannon, traditional air cannon would go. How would you get to that? How would you get to that to perform maintenance? You, you, you're going to have to, and how you even gonna know if it's done? You're going to have to depend on buildup. And everybody that's had a plugged feed pipe knows how long it takes to clean that up. It's days and days. It's difficult.

But what we do is we put the air cannon on top, we give it enough volume, and on the shorter runs, we use the four inch C air cannons on the, the nozzles. On the longer runs, we use the six inch. So because of the, the longer the run and the greater the nozzle, the, the, the better you are. And so this system is, has, has been installed and has worked really good. And it really, the potential of an eight inch cannon versus a four inch cannon. It's the, you start with five times greater force, which means it doesn't matter what you end up with, it matters. I mean, it doesn't matter what you start with. It ends up with what you end up with.

And on this, if we have a 33% drop, which what we've measured in this, we have a peak force of 1,893 compared to a myth the mythical peak force of 1,296 for four inch. Even though because of the nozzles they do, it's much less. So you are, we're providing the power and you can provide the power if you know what you're doing. Now this is, i I think I'm getting a little short on time. So I'm gonna go real quick on this. This is on a feed shelf application where we replace air cannons that gave them problems. But you can see where the air cannon is, is very accessible for maintenance. Now on the operational cycle, we do it every three minutes, I mean every 20 minutes.

But there's three discharges for one air cannon. And so to reach the cycle of the duty life, it's, it's 30 years, right? So duty cycle's not the problem. And to operate a third, a third, you go, well, why don't you gimme a 30 year guarantee? Well, we'll all be dead and, and, and 10 years is far good enough. But here's an application where you, you gotta, again, everything accessible for maintenance. Now this guy's gonna have to get on the floor, but you know, that's what they decided to do. But in, you know, when you protect your air canning, you also have to protect it from the, from the the plant air.

And, and I find, and sorry to say this, that everybody lies against their plant about their plant air. We put a water separator on it, and we traditionally put a filter on it. So by not fill and, and separating the fill layer for the, the, the solenoid valves in the, the air cannon separated from the air can from the tank. 'cause you could have some water in the tank, but it, this is reasons why you can guarantee it for 10 years because you, you do, you take care of it up front. Now, one of the things that we did on this application is this was on a a on a crusher. And they were filling up and they were losing area. They installed them. And look what they, they used the air canon to clean it.

Look how the vast difference that it moved did move thousands of pounds. We typically promote an air cannon to prevent the buildup instead of removing the buildup. But this was very successful. But this is a giant cement. We have air cannons where we replaced air competitors air cannons on the cooler and the feed shelf. And again, you see how we, we protect it from the environment and protect it. So where you can perform maintenance on it. But if you look at four corners, which is 64 air cannons, that's a lot of money. They, if you're gonna replace 64 air cannons, you know that it's a, a very expensive problem that they have.

And one of the things is, is that, did you know that to keep your air canon in code in the us the A SME code, you have to externally inspect the, can the tanks every five year internally inspect it every 10 years. Most people don't follow the code and they're out of code. But if on this we will replace 64 air cannons with eight air cannons. So it's, it's a whole lot easier to do that. But now you want to go, whoa, eight inch air canon. Haven't, haven't known it, but we have 21 installed in power 16 installed in cement, 37. The six inch nozzle is designed to replace two four inch nozzles. So these air cannons have replaced the need for 324 inch cannons.

So we have the experience and I, and we actually can document what we say by, by this now, what we, you're gonna do, if you follow the science in common sense, you can get a 10 year air cannon warranty. You get a three year warranty on your nozzles. And, and what we also do is, as a standard, we guarantee performance. If we don't do, if we don't eliminate your buildup after we told you we could, we'll give you a refund. So common sense asks the question, since buildup has gotten more difficult to clean, you know, a lot of the alternative fuse are di more difficult to clean, and plants have gotten much larger. Why do you use, why is the industry using technologies that's 20 years old?

It just, to us, it does not make sense. You must take ha technology has to catch up to air cannons. And if you'll open your mind, it ha it can open and can be so, and we can solve your problems. Air cannons are a path to help be carbon neutral and to solve your buildup problems. And the installation of an air cannon when installed properly can save you millions of dollars. Now I'm ready and hopefully we'll take any question that you have. Thank you very much, Jeff. Well, I think I might have to ask a question that's on everyone's lips, which is how much does it cost? Well, it's, it's less expensive. but you know, the, the additional canon is about 20% more.

So, you know, I know that it's, it's like, are you nuts? You're going to offer a product that cleans better, that has less maintenance and costs less? Are you insane? Well, we push it on quality, but you know, I would say that the average cost per port when is cleaning is including everything is $4,000 per port. Mm-hmm. Now there's some, if you look at, you know, that, that is including installation and nozzle. That's everything. That's the whole gambit. And what about operating costs?

There is a paper recently published that we can share that they say that the air leakage of one air cannon is greater than the, the operating cost of, of all the, all of the air cannons, which were 50 discharged during each discharge. So it's about the air, the, the operating costs when you fill in fire like we do is about 80% less. Okay, very good. And, and a couple of questions here that have come in. very good. What considerations must someone have when installing air cannon? must they be installed in the same direction of, of the gas as the gas flow in a duct? Well, if you install an air cannon looking into the gas flow, it tends to get built up. So you must install the nozzle.

So where it does not and does not build up inside the nozzle, you know so it, it's not a hard yes, but you always try to protect the nozzle because that's protecting the air cannon from the environment. But I've never been able to not install a nozzle. So where it doesn't build up when it's not operating. It's one of the, the, the big benefits that we have that our nozzles don't build up. 'cause a build up the no build a nozzle that builds up, impacts performance and life. and what about other things like air speed and noise level? Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna address the, the noise level first. people often say that our air can's not working 'cause it's not as loud because of the air cylinder.

It's, it's, it's much quieter. So the noise level is one of the advantages of the air cylinder design on the speed of sound. Newton, who is, is, is, is our guide tells us that you can convert energy from one form to another without the loss of energy. So what we do is we tend to reduce from one size to a lower size to increase the velocity without the loss of energy. We, one of the, one of the problems you might look at is we exceed the speed of sound. It's 1200 feet per second. So that sonic boom that you have is lo localized to the internal. So it's quite loud on the inside, but not so loud on the outside. And the, that sonic boom, the pressure pulse also aids in cleaning. Very good.

Well, that's a very compelling presentation and a great start to the year. Thank you for for that, Jeff. and for the questions that have come in, there's one or two more if you'd like to look at them, Jeff, in the q and a. But that's brilliant, a great start. you can you can remove the, the slides now and I'll I'll move on to our next presentation. But Jeff Shelton from Ion, thank you. Thank you. Okay, well pleasure. Now to introduce a regular really for these webinars. Stefan Nyman a corporate trainer and consultant at CC Jensen Stefan's dedicated over two decades to enhancing plant maintenance efficiency with certifications as an ICML machinery Lubrication analyst and technician.

Stefan has conducted hundreds of seminars across industries, including steel, paper and cement, specializing in oil maintenance, including filtration technologies. Stefan provides expertise on reducing oil consumption, minimizing wear, and extending equipment lifespans. This presentation will outline the cost saving potential advanced oil filtration systems backed by documented case studies. So, over to you Stefan. Thank you very much. And hello everybody. I hope you are ready for, for new presentation. yeah, like, like I said, this is focusing on some savings you can generate by looking at the plant maintenance oil filtration in there, and there's a lot of savings to be had.

So let's dig into that. So the topics of my presentation will be, you know, we look at the different contamination sources and how they affect machine reliability how you, the filters that you already have and the breeders will be insufficient very often as standard. and how you can implement some optimum oil contamination control system and some cases. yeah. So why is clean oil in the systems important? Well, one of the thing is that you can eliminate 50 to 80% of the oil changes if you can keep the oil clean. And that's, of course a lot of opec. So operation, cost savings, and of course also the environment. if you save a lot of oil, you can also decrease the downtime up to 75%.

And this is probably the biggest expense of the plant. so if you can increase the production and minimize the breakdowns, you can of course get also better planning. so there's a, a lot of savings here. And finally, you reduce the spare parts consumption by 60%, and that will be the mechanical spare parts. So bearings, pumps, beers, and what have you. And, and by increasing reliability of the equipment. So there's a lot of savings to refine if you have clean oil in the systems. Very briefly, CEN is a family owned company. we are established in 1953 based in headquarters in Denmark, and we work with cement and mining, but also other industries, power generation, marine and wind.

and our vision is to maintain the customers oil, clean and dry, prolong the lifetime of the oil as well as the machinery, which will of course benefit the manufacturers, the owners, and the environment. And fl Smith here, you know currently plants here will say that this is probably the best investments with the shortest return on investment they will ever meet. So there's a lot of, you know, a lot of customers out there that have used a oil maintenance to to create savings. Also, briefly, Hinson is partnered with Noria Corporation. So we do training with Noria. It's an American based company. they don't sell, let's say equipment, they sell knowledge.

so there's also a possibility to take online courses with Noria if you cannot go to Denmark or, you know, the US or whatever they're running. So you can see more here on ctc, DK services and training or Google for Noria Corporation. that also works. Alright, so to the presentation, well, here you see an, an overview of a cement plan. And so you will have I'll just find the laser pointer here. So you will have mobile machinery. So the yellow gear, what you call them there'll be a lot of oil on there that you need to have clean. Also, the fuel is included in that. you'll be having crushes that crushes the rocks. And of course also raw mills and, and cold crushes.

There'll be gear boxes on the conveyor belts, you'll have the kilns with bearings. And so on the clinker cooler hydraulics, we'll have the cement mills and the, and the gears and bearings there. And you may even have power plants nearby that supply the power. And the power plant also has a lot of oils that need to be maintained. So there's a huge potential for you know, using filters on oil systems here. Now the problem is often that during operation, the lubricants the oil system will be contaminated by particles, water acidity, and oxidation, which is linked together, breaking the oil down, that reduces the lifetime of the oil in the machine.

Reliability will be harmed in efficiency as well. And up to 80% of the system breakdown. So actually due to contaminated oil. And you probably know that contaminated oil is a big thing in cement industry. That's, yeah, it's very difficult to keep the oil clean. So there's a lot of savings if we can keep the oil cleaner. So therefore, I have a little question for you. You can just think about, you don't need to answer in the, in the in the chat, but just what is the typical operation condition of a pump in the plants? You know, is it operating hours less than 5,000 hours or, or would it be 50 to 15,000 hours of, sorry, five to 15,000, or would it be more than 15,000?

Well, the reason I'm asking you is because we see very dirty oil is typically you'll see less than 2000 hours live for the pumps. That will also mean maybe gears bearings and so on hydraulic components. And that is not good. 'cause if you have clean oil, you specifically see 50 to 60,000 operation hours. And have we even seen hundred thousand operation hours from some applications that wouldn't be in, in cement because it's too dirty. But so as you can see here, here you get 30 times more hours out of an equipment that 30 times, that's, that's a lot of money. So I have a case here, this is on cement fill bearings.

you know, on the cement mill, you have a, a floating and a fixed bearing, and they were very, very dirty, the oil in there. So every six months they would replace the pumps there two pumps on there. And you see here, the ISO code, that's a cleanliness for the oil is very, very dirty on the fixed bearings and the floating bearing a, a little cleaner, but still not clean. The main problem is you were losing 800 tons of production for every time they need to stop. So installing A CTC filter, you can see it here, a little green filter here. that means there was no pumps being replaced and there was no on unplanned maintenance or something lost production or similar.

So in six years here, we ran the, the these, there was, they're still maintaining a good oil level. You can see here, initially in May 12. and then just cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. So more than 99% of the particles have been removed. and of course that means that you're not changing pumps anymore. So that's some savings there. But also you lost you know, your labor cost is saved and in, in, in annually it will give you six and a half thousand dollars savings. But of course, in six years it'll be 40 grand almost. so, and 8,800 tons times two per year. So 1600 times tons of savings. oh, could you say that production, you can increase.

So a very happy maintenance manager here that you can, you can read yourself. So there's a lot of cases like that. if you go to our webpage, so what I'll typically see is it's often that contamination will get out of control. Here's some photos I got from FLSmith or FLS. You can see it doesn't look so nice. It's, it's a rough environment, we all know that. But it's very difficult to keep the system completely clean. So dirt will come in and create, you know, unsat you know, uncountable dirty oil, so saturated completely with dirt, dust and, and different contamination.

So very often you see expected lifetimes will not achieve these about a hundred thousand hours, and you'll see a lot of failures. And oil life, maybe 8,000 or less. I very often also see 2000 hours oil life. And of course, on she downtime means operation is you know, impaired and you'll have oil and maintenance cost increasing. very often your filters already built in are very core, so, you know, very, very open filters. And they are not, they cannot meet the requirements and cannot keep up. You can see some filters that are very, very small compared to actually what you need to, to clean when you are talking oil in these systems.

And, and most of them are, are keeping very little amount of dirt. And then half a kilo or one pound is actually a big element, mostly few hundred grams. So yeah, and that of course means you need to change them often and still you cannot keep up. And when you have the normal filters that, you know, what we call pleated filters, they are very thin. Maybe you can see in front of my face here, very thin sheets. So if you have pressure pulses in the system, they will actually break the fibers and lose the efficiency very quickly. and it's only focusing on particles, but not water or oxidation of the oil. So breaking down the oil. so they, they cannot solve the solution here.

Now, if we look at the, the particles, for example, the problem is often understanding how small particles we're talking about. So one micron is a thousand of a millimeter. that will be 70 micron is about a hair in diameter while the smallest we can see with the naked eye would be 40 micron. but the particles that actually killing your machine your bearings, your gearbox, your pumps and so on, you cannot see they're in the size of one micron, three microns. So tobacco, smoke or bacteria or something. And that can actually be in your fingerprints without you feeling them. That's how small they are. But still, they can kill your machines. And why is that the case?

Well, because the oil film thickness is very, very small. So when you have systems in operation, for example, hydraulic cylinders, if it's not very highly loaded it could have an oil film of 50 micron, but most of them you'll meet have an oil film of 10 micron be in the cylinder and the ball. the servo valve, proportional valves and so on are even worse. There's only room for three micron oil film in between the moving planter here and the, the housing or the the ball. So very little room for oil and therefore contamination that will come in roller bearing ball bearings and so on. Less than one micron typically, but could be up to three micron.

both pump types are also very sensitive, especially piston pumps, you know, high pressure pumps. five micron or smaller oil films gears between the teeth less than one micron, again, crazy small and of course, lip seals and dynamic seals, all rings and so on, less than half a micron. Now, all this we cannot remember, but if we just remember that most of these are 10 micron or five micron or smaller, and that is crazy small, like I said, it can be in your fingerprints and you can't feel it. So yeah, so if we look at the sizes of contamination, like I say, very big particles like a human hair or 40 or something, there's very few of them.

Let, let me show you a curve here for distribution or particles in used oil. Most of the particles in used oil is are very, very small. 70% of them are below five micron, but that means about 90% are small than 10 micron, and only 10% is bigger than 10 micron. So the majority of particles are here and circulating through your systems if you don't have a proper filter system. So the standard pre depleted filter would typically be maybe 10 micron, but a lot of them, 15, 20 micron, maybe even 50 micron, that means fairly long life. But you will have long filter life, but not a long machine life. It'll actually create wear.

the challenge is if you only have these previous filters, they, they're not room for a lot of dirt, so they will block very, very easily, maybe only lasted 10th of the time if there were three mic. So if you wanted a proper filter, you need to combine different types of filters. So that's what we'll have to look at. So when particles are getting into a bearing, you know, there may be room one place for 10 micron, but in the load zone, only one or three five micron especially gears, ball bearings and valves, there's no room for the particles. So they will crush and, you know, create wear. remember to seal the oil systems as much as possible.

So you need filter system, but you also need, you know, a proper you know, manhole covers, I would seals on and gaskets and so on. your inline filter could be 10 micron, 20 micron or something. The smaller, the better. Of course, in, in micron rating the offline filter, this is the one that cen produces. This is taking from the bottom of the sum and run it through the filter with its own pump and back to where the main system draws or the hydraulic system, for example, pump. This is running continuously cleaning the oil.

No matter if the system is actually on or off the main system, this will be running, this is a three micron filter, so very, very good filter, but also very, very high capacity. and then you need your, your breeder. So maybe a dissident breather if you have humidity in the area. So combining three filters, one for the air, so the breeder, one for the inline pressure, and then for one for the offline. That's your total protection of the oil system. So the inline filter depleted filter would have a fairly high flow rate, especially if it's a hydraulic system. Not very fine filtration. Normally not very much room for dirt because it's only on these thin sheets that you have it.

and only focus on particle movement if you have a cellose based offline filter. So this kidney loop or this offline loop, it typically runs lower flow than inline, but it's much finer filtration, very high dirt hole capacity. I'll just show you one. So the, this is one element, you can see it, it covers my face completely. So it's it's actually 27 times 27 centimeters. So what's that? That's well, six inch or something odd. I'm not good at inches. so 27, twice times 27 centimeters. but it also takes water and, and and ish, so degraded oil. And because you do that, you can also increase the oil life. That'll show you here in a second.

So you may look at a pleated filter like this, but, but this is cheaper. This is, let's say 75 euros, but if it only holds a few hundred grams, then the cost for removing one kilogram will then be 750 euros. While if you take the more expensive cellose filter, but they hold 4,000 grams, so four kilograms. So suddenly you can see here your cost for removing the kilogram is certainly a 10th. And most of the con contamination, there's a lot of it. So you have to have massive filters that can remove it. And then you need a lot of these pleated, so it's not doable. You'll need to combine it with offline filters that take a lot of dirt out and water and monish.

So also be aware when we're talking filters and when you talk to your normal supplier as well, that the filters, if they cannot keep up with the ingression, you'll see here the rate curve. I know it's difficult for you to see, but it will actually get dirty and dirty at the oil system because you simply cannot keep up with the ingression and the generation aware. The normal filters are being tested with a very artificial test. the multi-pass test, it's only tested for one hour, two hours, maybe three maximum with very cost cost. So you actually don't know if it'll function a long time. We test the filters for 72 hours and we see, so that's you know a much more.

And you see very often the filters that we are testing, they will actually ch create channels through the media. So the thin sheets here after a couple of days, because they're building up pressure and, and then of course they cannot keep up. So when you cannot keep up, you get more, more dirty oil. And the, when the cleanliness suffer, you'll be spending money on oil and you know, machine components. So in other case here, this is on as a melt mill gearbox, again, very, very dirty oil, I would say almost uncountable dirty oil on the gearbox.

After six days, it's, you know, half the amount of particles after 18 days, it's down to an iso code 17, 15, 11 on that six, which is actually 99% re reduction of the particles. So also the iron in the gearbox, the content, then the oil was dropped by 85%. So there's a lot of things you can do with a, with a good oil filter. and here they, well, they got three times longer components, life and, you know, bearings, skiers and so on. And that's a lot of savings. But of course, if you don't have this cement mill running, then you can, you can add up the costs. So the parts are just a little part compared to the downtime.

When we do the calculation of opex cost and yeah, calculation together with customers, we do, we use some different programs. I'll just give you an example. Here is a crusher with a thousand liters of key oil. Oil. The customer will change it every two and a half thousand hours using two inline filters every six months, and resulting in 23 hours downtime per year. Now with the three mic and ct C offline filter, the same crusher, you have an oil change 10,000 hours longer. So 12,500 hours, only one inline filter in 18 months. And of course, you change the, the other filters, the the CTC offline filter and only eight hours of downtown.

So what it means for them is you see opex cost without the filter on 94,000, 35,000, so almost 60 grand savings. and yeah, the filters about 7,000 in this example here. So, you know, return on investment is like two months, less than two months. So very, very good return on investment. These, and all these that, that I've done calculation with, there's none of them that are more than half a year. So, and for me our eye of half a year is like a no brainer. Of course, you need to do that. So yeah, summering summarizing here. So with clean oil, you can eliminate 50 to 80% of the oil changes. You can decrease the downtime by 75%. spare part cost consumption is reduced by 60%.

and again, FL Smith, they say this is the best investment you'll ever meet. So thank you very much. And remember to visit our booth in, at the Cemtech middle East here, conference in Dubai in February 9th to 12. definitely go there. Also, we were told in, in the start by, by Thomas. and you're welcome also to send me an email or go and find lots of information on cdg.dk. There's some different diets here, how to take oil samples, how to do this and that. And we'll also have a YouTube channel. So any questions? I'm open for it. That's that's great. Thank you, Stefan.

wonderful presentation and very persuasive in in, in how how much you can save just from using the right equipment in the right way. there are a couple of questions. One I get I think is, is is, is quite general. What, what's the frequency of cleaning for VRM gearbox oil as per your recommendations? Do you have a specific program for VRM gearboxes? Yeah, I would say typically with the, the, what we work with is we have the offline filter cleaning 24 7. So it's a, there's, it's a smaller filter. It's not small, but it's a filter that is cleaning 24 7. So you actually, you don't need to think about the frequency or moving it around because it's staying there all the time cleaning.

And that's the best way, the cheapest way actually to, to clean the system. If you have a mobile system, if you can, I would move it, you know, every, every week. and then, because typically if it's, it takes more than one week, then your oil is getting so extremely filthy and dirty that the, the the dirt would just start to fall out and you'll see contamination everywhere. So either have it running 24 7, so continuously that's the best. If you need to have a mobile solution, at least move it every week. Okay. very helpful. And the other question was, what temperature can the cellulose based offline filter withstand? Yeah, good question.

now most of the oil systems will not be relevant with the highest temperature bit, but we have, we are testing currently up to 180 degrees C now, at the moment is one 50 degrees C, which is a maximum. So so if it's what do you call a thermal, a heat system, it's, it's not warm enough, but for gearbox, hydraulic bearings and so on, 150 degrees will never be an issue. Fantastic. Okay, well that's a great presentation, very clear. and as you said, you'll be at the at, at the conference, in the exhibition in, in, in Dubai. So look forward to to, to that. thank you very much, Stefan. Great presentation. Thank you. Okay. we are going fast through these presentations.

I'm delighted to introduce our last speaker. if Panko, you'd like to put your slides up now while I make your introduction. And panko Gupta is the general manager at Hasley Ref factories. he has 18 years of experience in providing advanced refractory solutions to the cement, power and metal sec sectors. With a background in chemical engineering, panke specializes in helping cement plants achieve operational efficiency while addressing the challenges posed by alternative fuels. His expertise lies in offering customized refractory designs, low cement castable, and has these innovative precast modular aligning system.

In this presentation, pan Cash will explore field proven solutions designed to combat chemical attacks, reduce coating buildup, and maintain heat distribution in preheated towers under challenging AF utilization conditions. Over to you, Pankaj. Thank you Thomas, much for nice introduction and thank you for providing this opportunity to speak on this knowledge sharing platform. Very good afternoon to everyone. I'm Panka Upta has business in India, middle East, and Africa. As we all know, all industries globally are now talking about the sustainability and it's pleasure that cement industries started. Its steps on sustainability many years back by adapting several steps.

so one of the step was su substituting the traditional fuel by alternative fuel. So, but this just substitution offer traditional fuel comes with some process challenges. So in my presentation, I will discuss process challenges faced by cement plants when using increased alternative field and what refractory solution has they can offer to mitigate this refractory challenges by the use of high percentage alternative fuel. So in my presentation, I will give brief introduction about my company Hasley, and its product range, raw material and its characteristics, different kind of alternative fuel and cement plant challenges.

Then what refractory solution hasley can offer are different case stories from the, from the plant and then ceramic water finder. What has Hasley is now offering globally and its filters and globally around and finding the conclusion of this presentation. So Hasley is basically a privately owned company established way back in 1843, head office r and d and is in Denmark. Subsidiaries are in India, Thailand, and European sales office in Copenhagen. Our annual capacity 20,000 tons forecastable, and 1000 tons for precast. We are serving to more than 50 countries all over the world. From our head office, we provide engineering, consulting and designing for refractory lining.

We carry out all the various tests to measure and secure our material performance as per specific customer process environment. And for all installations, we provide expert supervision by depending our expert supervisor at the site. During this time of installation we produce all kind of dense castable and also precast precast products, which is made up out of our own products. So the product, the products are you manufactured by using best quality raw materials like shamo, endocyte, mulli oxide, cor dump, silicon carbide, micro silica, silica, and aluminum fuels to get these different properties required from the refractory.

So has refractory products are known around the world for its outstanding properties and distance to high temperature, chemical attack, thermal sock erosive, and aggressive wear buildup and slack mechanical stress. So, which is the main challenge for any cement plant. Now coming to the alternative fuel, since the beginning of the cement production industries using conventional fuel, but since last two, three decades cement industries started to use alternative fuel in slow, slow manner.

Like now it has reached a high percentage of alternative field in, in the civil industry and different alterna fields are, can be used like a Petco in solid waste, pharmaceutical waste, biomass, deject tasks, waste solids and liquid plastics, et cetera. So these alternative fields come with various size and say various vari there variation in heat values, there is variation in the moisture content, and that is coming with high moisture content. So there is problem of incomplete combustion in the Cal center. That is why we have to maintain the high temperature in the cal signers. So cal signers and lower cyclones are running on little bit higher temperature compared to previous operations.

So as we all know that most of the kills all over the world are the older kill older designs. And they are not meant for the burning of alternative fuel. So because of high percentage of burning up, high percentage of alternative fuel, there is a lot of emission of of chloride, sulfates, nitrogen, and heavy metals. To sum, to summarize that the challenger faced by the plant process team is high operating higher, higher operating temperatures in the igner and cyclones chemical attack on refractory and steel parts wall material buildup on the refractory lining is steel car horizon and corrosion. So there are requirement of no equipment, skull signer, extension, and need for bypass.

So one of the major issue is the coating issue in the lowest part of the pre hitter that here I'm sewing the ter lowest area that is smoke chamber area and riser. Then the other parts like cyclone is feed pipes and cyclone conical portion, which is more prone to putting because of the use of high percentage of does that after burning up that there is lot of personal of, of these asay are there. And which when react with different kind of material produces more and more putting in the system so that coating is stick with the refractory learning. So to mitigate that coating sticking with the, the refractory learning has, we have is a unique model learning solution, which can be seen here.

This is basically the, these are the main precast elements and these precast elements are casted and preferred under control condition for maximum strength and low ity that we are able to achieve nine to 10% low lower open ity on the, for the refractory and very high surface permeability so that it does not allow coating to stick with the precast. As I already told, that we are using very high quality raw material, which ensure no or less reactivity with hazardous chemicals like ly sulfate and chlorides. And you can expect the longer life of three to four times with compared to pastured lining. And because of its flexible design, thin lining is also possible with same or less heat loss.

And as these these regards elements are very small in size, like it is 2 55, 2 50 in the size. And weight wise it's 15 to 16 cases. So it is very easy to handle and install at the site in different area. Along with the precast lining, we are also having different rate of castable, which can be used in different critical areas. for cement, cement plant that is bundle pipe and bull nose, nose ring smoke chamber area, cyclones, and this hood area. Depending on the problem of the planter, we can supply different data customer to improve the life of refractory planning. So here some cases from the plant this is the case from Thailand line 8,000 tons. And this plant is using 10% RDF.

And this plot is facing a lot of coating issue in their, their riser area. You can see in the picture that the, there is a lot of coating on the cast surface. And here in this plant we installed on trial basis, we installed our precast lining. And you can see even after four years, there are no coating formation on the surface of refractory. And this is the case from India there, this 10,000 TPD plant, and this is using, this plant is using a hundred percent Petco in the main and consigner. So you can see the coating formation in the lowest feet pipe. And here you can see that around 50%, more than 50% is choked with the coating formed in the feed pipes.

So here we installed our this design sical, design precast elements, and after installation of the this precaster, they never face the coating issue in their feed pipes. And by this solution, you can get the life of six to 80 years in the without any quoting issue, issue issue in the feed pipes. So another area, maybe this smoke chamber area where this, this plant is basically 10,000 TP platform India, and they are using, once they start to use alternative field, they are facing lot of coating issue in their smoke chamber boxes.

So we, here, we installed our PIKA lining in the slope area, and the plant was avoided the coating format around the refractory lining, and they were able to achieve four to five years life in their alert slope area. So coming to the cooler side part this is the cooler case from one of the plant in Vietnam 5,000 TBD plant. And this is using 30% RDF here. they are getting life of one campaign only with the monolithic lining. And here we installed our precast lining and the plant was able to get four years life. You can see the picture after three years and after four years.

So after, even after four years, the condition of blocks are in his precast lining is looks good, but customer decided to change it again with the has precast lining. this is the case from one of the German planter using the running on 5,000 TB D kill line. And this is using 82 to 95% mix of RDF and other, other alternative fuel. And this plant was getting only 24 months life in their cooler roof area. And now we are already achieved a seven years life in this cooler. And this is picture after five years. You can see after five years the condition of cooler roof area is fantastic. So now coming to the our new product that is third ceramic vortex finder, we call it CVF.

And this is the basically a, an alternate solution for still dip tubes cyclone cell. So as we all know that dip tubes are the, an integral part of re cyclones designed for the cyclone design and its function. So each and every plant, cement plant is having this dip tubes in their cyclones, in their design, but because of higher percentage of alternative will use. So there are some challenges also in the cyclone. So because of burn delaying burnout in the, there is increase in lower stage lower stage pre temperatures are there in the cyclones.

And because of high percentage of af, more coercive environment is there in the cyclones, and which is leading to the corrosion of refractory and steel parts. And also an steady and incomplete af cumbersome is there in the car and cyclone. So because of this high, high corrosion of steel parts of dip tube and then mixed with the this erosion by the dust particles. This, these, these deep tubes are failing frequently, and sometimes it is buckling, sometimes it is deforming and after sometime it is failing down from the side from the roof. So once it is fell down, then it means that you know, that once it is fed the plant has to go for emergency, emergency shut down and for six, seven days.

So that is a big loss for student plants. and any plant which is failure there, if there is fairly frequently failure offers still dus. They, there are many plants which have removed this steel dip tube from their lower cyclones, like lowest one and second lowest one. So by removing that these steel dip tube from their cyclones, they are, there is what is the lead to reduced suppression efficiency in the cyclones and leading to higher fuel and power consumption of that plant. So this is reducing, degrading the plant efficiency.

And so seeing the, that problem with the steel gyp tube has, has thought to develop a third generation ceramic dip tube to with a target that a dip tube that performs regardless of wearing framework condition, like we have taken care of fuel views, cyclone design, different cyclone design, different operating condition is start up and shut down procedures of, of cement plant. So to develop the our new generation ceramic deep tubes, we focused on two things. The first one is deep tube material and this, the second one is deep tube design.

So what we targeted to develop that the main requirement from the deep tube material was not information or creep up to temperature of hundred th 1100 degrees. And high strength and fractured topness would be there in the material high corrosion distance toward the all, all common corrosive substances in the gas phase high. And it should be easy and quick installation. And in the design part we focused on the stress and temperature distribution in the cyclones bending movements momentum in the cyclones to that any, the ceramic tips should have to take care of this and of course it's own weight, which it is hanging.

So after number of trials, field trials, we are able to develop a new ceramic material, which we call as HyperC premium. So this material is having no cement bonding made. This is made of syn synthetic raw material which reversed robust air metrics, including nanoparticles. And by several days of heating, we are able to general produce the desired tri line structure. So finally we are able to able to get this prop final following properties with the cera dum material that is high mod tructure high ion NCE highline residence, no creep under tenile load to 1200 degrees C and high re to thermal sub.

So this is the final composition we are now having for this surrounding material for and for the design part, what we how we worked upon that we took the realistic load cases using real cement plants, operating data, different cyclone designs. We used the different softwares to optimize the elements design. And we also took care of volume to save optimization for purifying because you rectify their crack and bending of the, this failure is there is pro problem is there. So we also optimize the volume to save during the pre-filing and all the physical tests has been done in the lab.

So finally we are able to design dip two, which is can be ED as a structural component suspended from the cyclone roof, which is easy to install and fits in all regular heater cyclone design. So finally we are able to develop our third ceramic dip, which is having three com three parts, basically steel supporting, which will be welded with the cyclone roof roof area, and then expansion joint that is ceramic fiber, which will take care of expansion of steel and also the ceramic elements. And this is called of the ceramic water expander. So there are three main main elements.

This, this one will be the work as the first row, first ring of the CVF, which will take care of the, all, the entire load of the ceramic dip tube. Then this is the second type of element, which will be the main body of the ceramic tube. And this is the last thing, which will be the locking element of the, the ceramic tube. So what fuel we did field test in German cement plant. this plant is basically 5,000 TBD plant dual listing and running at 95% to 95% mix of RDF and af.

So the case was with the problem was this, with this plant was that because of high uses of alternative field there failure of there is still D two within two to three months time, and most of the time they are running without dip tube, so lo losing lot of heat during the operation. So we did all the trials with this plant and finally we are able to, now we are able to achieve the life of one year. I means one full campaign in this plant against two to three months with his GD tube. And now with ceramic has ceramic dip tube, we are able to achieve one year lifetime in this plan. And for there, this is for lowest one.

And so, so second lowest we installed and now it is running since last four years in still. So it's working well. So depending on the success field trial, we installed our ceramic tube in one of the, a Australian planter that is 4,000 TBD plant running on 40% RDF. And we installed here, installed here in the year January 23. And by the this, this January 25, we are going to achieve two years life in this plant. Earlier this plant was not running without, this plant was running without any steel dip tube since many years, maybe 10 to 15 years, they're not having steel dip tubes because of affected failures in the past.

So now they are able to instrument get the life of two years in their lowest cyclones. And this year in 24 we also, last year we also installed our dip tubes in two emergency milk plants. And this is picture what we got from the site after nine months. other, other installation was that in the last two quarter of 24, we installed our dip tube in one of the plant in Japan. And we also got some order a few orders from Canada, some plants from Canada and also from, again from USA. And we also got from order from South Korea. So that means the planning, which will be installed Q1 and Q2 of this year. So that will be updated later.

And so I will co I will, I would like to conclude my presentation with this comments that has the prototype to, to hy chemicals like LK, sulfates and chlorides. So we support them more and more charging of alternative fuel, which makes a plant more sustainable as they're using, going to use more and more. So there is by providing the extended life compared to casted li lining less consumption of refractory over the period of time. So less consumption of natural resources and energy, hence improves plant overall sustainability goal. And second point is that HASAs is register to coating and, and provides omic free operations.

So it optimizes the process by providing designed operational area all the time because there is no coating formation on the this RAC learning. So a frequent cleaning of coating and use of lesser number of air cans, which reduces electric. And so maybe Jeff can related and then finally has the ceramic water funder is very much suitable for high alternative fields, charging plants because cement plants without any pre premature failure, so there is will be no un implant are down due to corrosion, falling upstage dip tube. And also the plants which are not having dip tube in their lower cyclones, they can, they may be more energy efficient by using our serum dip tube.

Thank you for, thank you very much for listening our presentation. And depending on geo on your geographical area, we can be contacted on following email id. And we are also available ms, we are also on LinkedIn and Facebook where we are publishing every week we are posting different cases from sim industry power industry. So please follow us on the LinkedIn, Facebook to get the update on the product, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Pan cash really useful presentation there. You've covered some great ground. yeah, we, we we, there's a lot about alternative fuels and the impact on the process and the condition of the refractory in the precal sign and, and the, the dip tube has.

it's something that you've written in international cement review. We've got a, an article on that in a recent, recent issue. And it's a really important innovation. so congratulations on that. There are a few questions around that. one, one is can you explain more on the the practicality of replacing or partially replacing maintaining the ceramic dip tube? so once it's in place there's a, that, that's one, one question. And the other was to do with the, the cost and how it compares to the steel grade dip tube cost compared to the ceramics. So if you could address those two, two areas.

So regarding maintenance, once it is installed in the cyclones, there is no maintenance is required only during the in between breakdowns you can just inspect the cycl, your cyclones, and every time, generally every time it is fine, there's no issue. So after one campaign, maybe one year, you can plant can inspect the thoroughly, thoroughly, and if there is some, some damage or anything happened with this verex finders, then it can be replaced accordingly. And there is also possibility that if some elements are damaged, it can be replaced actually. So that is the beauty of this cera water finder.

And regarding the prices I will say that it depends on what kind of dip, still dip we are using right now because it varies from country to country. So what we supplied in in mostly in the Europe and US and Japan, where Australia, where we supplied, they never talked on the price ground because they are telling that it is comparable with the best quality of steel dip tubes. But yes but if any plant is use using low grade steel dip tubes, then it is expensive compared to that one. So it depends on the quality of steel grade, what the plant is using right now. So for the co. Okay. Okay, thank you very much. there was one sort of very specific question. I dunno if you can answer this.

when installing refrac inside the kil, is it important to add some mortar paste or OT between the refractory and the shell? and if so, why is this practice important? can you address that? Can you repeat again? can you repeat Please? So the, the, the question is whether it the, the practice of adding mortar paste or ot, I think clay between the refractory in the shell is this something that you are familiar with? And if so, why is it important? Yeah, well if it is they're talking about the kil lining, I am not talking about that. But out of the kil there is always two layer lining, is there, one is the hot face and one is the back, back backup layer. So hot phase is always a dense cast table.

And in backup it is inserting great customer to reduce the thermal losses from that. So regarding the, I don't think it is required, that is basically backup lining is inserting lining not the ot, because OT is having high density and it'll pass the heat. Mm-hmm. So there is no benefit of that. Yeah. But for this mortar is used in between the outcast elements. just like in between the bricks there is some small thick one or two thickness is motor is applied to in between two bricks or in between two, three cast elements, but not behind the. Okay. Very good. Well, thank, thank you for that. Thanks for answering these questions and for fi finishing off the webinar today. thank You very much.

Thank you. Thank Ash. Thank you very much. And and see you in Dubai, I hope. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. I'll there. Thank you. Okay, very good. Well, that's finished off the session very nicely. a big thanks to Hasley, to CC Jensen and to Sian core. and for those three excellent presentations really have got us off to a great start. we'll be back next month. as I said, we'll be talking about digitalization and some very cutting edge real ai and its application in the cement plant. until then do go and take a look at what's on offer for Cemtech in Dubai. that's coming up on the 9th of February. I think today or tomorrow is the last day for early bird dedicate registrations. So hopefully see you there.

and if not, at the next webinar all the best and enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you, You, bye-bye.