Closing the tertiary-air control gap: from blind spot to plant savings – Alexandra Graf, PROMECON

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome. Thank you, Thomas and David, for inviting me for this presentation. Yesterday we had very lovely panel discussions and also a lot of presentations which were very insightful. For example, thank you, Tony, to mention 1,500 sensors in a cement plant, and today I want to present you the 1,500 first, so a new one. But all of these sensors are completely useless, sorry to say, if you are not using them correctly in a control loop. What is the data meaning, especially nowadays, when you use artificial intelligence software control loops?

You will need intelligence behind the intelligence of the plant manager, the intelligence of the process engineers, because they know their plant. That's their hometown. Yes? So these people know their plant and they know how to use it. And for example, Peter introduced tertiary air as a nice tool which can be used for precalcining. Yes? And today I want to show you some tertiary air flow meter because it's very helpful to reduce your emissions, for example, also the NOx emissions in your precalcining and also the carbon emissions which are occurring in the cement industry. Yes?

So we are all part of the heavy industry and part of this decarbonization pathway also here in KSA, so thank you for inviting and discussing this. At first, I unfortunately have this marketing part of the marketing team. They told me I have to introduce the company for those who are not familiar with it. So this is the advertorial part of this job. The company was founded 1995, so we have 30 years, mainly in coal-fired power station, biomass, waste-to-energy, all this heavy industry, cement plants, smelter plants, so electric arc furnace. Also a big topic here in the GCC region, all these steel mills, for example. Half a year ago, I visited an electric arc furnace. It's an impressive mill.

Yes? You have this 1,600 degree hot off-gas. Imagine 40% of the off-gas in an electric arc furnace is lost. Yes? The heat and mass balance is really catastrophic. And nowadays politicians think, "Okay, let's do more electric arc furnace instead of blast furnace. This will heal the world." But honestly spoken, it's not a solution because they assume that we will not wear PPA anymore and then we walk with clean clothes through an electric arc furnace. An electric arc furnace is also a place which is very full of dust. Yes? In the evening when you go for a shower, you have all this black dust. That's part of the job in an electric arc furnace.

But people are thinking about this because for sure you can use green energy for a furnace, but we have also to think about where all this electricity comes from. And the first job for decarbonization should be to know your process in detail and to think about where to reduce existing flow, for example, gas flow, existing electricity, and how to reduce this to a minimum which is needed. This is the DNA of PROMECON, that we are in all this heavy industry and help you to reduce your ID fan speed to reduce this electricity amount before you emit the CO2. Here is a rough overview of the cement plants using this device, mainly within the Holcim Lafarge group.

For example, Holcim Maroc for the grinding and the raw mill is using our device, but also in Latin America, United States, MRN Rice, for example. The same in Italy with Burci Cement and many others. Today I will show you also some case studies from BATA Cement about the tertiary air duct. The first step we have to think about is, is your cement mill a repair shop? No. Your cement mill is a process including a grinding and a pyro section with a lot of energy and a lot of power. Yes? You have the typical motor power and you have the typical air flows. And all of them need a lot of electricity and even 1% reduction for such high numbers is impressive reduction. Yes?

Sometimes it happens that the people discuss, "Oh, it's only half percentage or one percentage reduction." But within these numbers, this means a lot of money. In the end, it's billions of dollars you can save by reducing the fan power for the ID fans. Our typical installation points of gas flow meters are the downcomer, the vertical raw mill, the bypass, the tertiary air. All these processes have something to do because you have to transport your clinker and you don't want to to recycle the dust-to-clinker ratio. So you want to convey your product, but not circulate it within the loops. So the first step is how to analyze this. Here you see some installation photo. Okay.

On the right side, you see the installation with the so-called antenna model, and you see it's completely covered by clinker. This is installed in a bypass chamber, and there is a duct where the device is permanently installed. But how is the measurement principle? This is patented by PROMECON. We have this for multiple years now. So normally you install two sensors which are within your duct, and then the duct is our friend. And we call this the dust is our friend because most of these alternative measurement problems have issues with dust. But we are measuring the dust which is passing by the antennas. So the dust is at antenna one, and then the dust is coming to antenna two.

And within this, we measure the time of flight. So in the end, such a device is a very expensive watch in a way because the distance is fixed and you will calculate the velocity because distance is fixed and we measure the time of the flight. So you have two fingerprints in the end, which are covered because the antennas are using the so-called triboelectric effect. So the electrically charged clinker particles, for example, they're passing by and then you're covering them. So yesterday I was often asked for which measurement range and accuracy such devices are used. And the most important part here is that it's at zero to 3,000 grams per cubic meter. Imagine 3,000 grams per cubic meter.

So this is also used, for example, for biomass power station at Drax in United Kingdom. So it's a massive load of the airflow. So here we have some installation at the downcomer, and I want to show you this installation because it's a perfect success story for PROMECON because these guys installed the device and forgot it after the third year. Yes? So normally you send some people having once per half a year in check of the installation, having some audits. They are doing some pitot, some grid measurements, and then you will have the result. But after the team is going away from your plant, then the data are drifting.

With a permanent installation like this device, the benefit is that you will install it and the data is then coming to your control loop. Honestly spoken, for sure, it's mandatory needed that you have a good control loop because otherwise the data is only visible but not useful for the plant. But how is this situated at the tertiary air duct? So what we measure, or what we explained in the beginning at the tertiary air duct... Sorry, the microphone. The tertiary air is very abrasive, very hot. So like I mentioned in the beginning, we are also measuring electric arc furnace. And compared to this, tertiary air is a stabilized airflow. Yeah? So it's like 1,100, 1,200 degree.

It has a high load of dust for sure, which is abrasive. An antenna model would not work within these ducts. But even for refractories and dampers, it's a challenging environment. Yes? So in the end, we developed a new model which is using the infrared emission. Yes? So using what is already there. You have dust, you have CO2, water within the tertiary air, and all these molecules have a infrared profile. And then we're measuring the infrared profile and matching them.

So in the end, we can give you the gas velocity, the temperature, in some situations also the composition of the gas, and then you can do an enthalpy calculation, which is very helpful like what was mentioned for the SCMs, the calcined clay, for example, and also all the other calcination processes. You need to know the oxygen amount within your tertiary air, and you need to know the airflow to calculate the volume. So in the end, you can do a heat and mass balance. And this is a 24/7 installation. So it's not doing once and then it's drifting. The result is permanently, and then it's a permanent help.

So what was explained at the beginning of other is that you typically have this process in the cement plants, but when you have a permanent data, then for sure it's not drifting. Yes, you have 1,500 other sensors, but the results should be permanently in the control loop, and that's also part of the job which we discussed with AI software. So here you can see a typical installation. The first one was installed at Varta Cement two years ago as a pilot plant, and then now we have installed it at multiple other installations, Cemex Hudder, so Cement Quebec in Canada, but also Holcim Siskovic.

And yes, we are here to discuss with you about new installations or for PROMECON, new installations within the Gulf region, the African region. Thank you.