In the cement industry, reliable processes are crucial to success. To stay competitive, a plant must function smoothly and efficiently at all times, delivering the best possible ROI with lowest possible cost.
Siemens offers tailored made solution, CEMAT, which has been proven and accepted in the cement industry over many years of service. CEMAT is based on SIMATIC PCS 7, proven distributed control system (DCS), and offers a unique open architecture for modern, future-proof, and economical solutions for the cement industry. It makes use of all features and functions of SIMATIC PCS 7 and adds additional industry-specific functionality. Special function blocks and faceplates are designed to manage all the kinds of operation, interlocking, and supervision functions that are typically required in cement plants.?The functions, being, preconfigured makes engineering easy, fast, and reliable. With CEMAT, it is possible to seamlessly control all horizontal and vertical processes – from crushing the raw materials to even enables continuous process optimization so the plant remains competitive over the long term. The company also offers advice and goal-oriented solutions to help the cement industry reduce its energy costs and minimise pollutant emissions so that the production process becomes just as energy-efficient and environmentally acceptable as the end product itself.
Some of the challenges faced by the industry as of now include
- Producing with highest availability and robustness
- Reducing operating cost by efficient use of resources
- Ensuring reproducible quality of products
- Efficient use of energy
- Minimising life-cycle cost
- Complying with regulations for environmental protection
- Acting on global markets with global partners
- Reduced operator workload
Trends in the cement industry
While the industry is dealing with these challenges, we can see that there is a trend evolving . Siemens is adding value to the efforts made by the industry to manufacture sustainability.
Challenges
One of the major challenges faced by the industry is efficient use of energy. Hence, cement industry seeks automation solutions that help in better power management and waste heat recovery. Automation helps in understanding how much energy each unit is using, thereby revealing the "energy wasters" that can be replaced by more efficient systems. Automation also monitors energy imports, and helps to stay within contractual limits by, for example, through selectively switching off defined parts of the plant.
Automation solutions
Automation solutionslike CEMAT can be extended to manage different fuels with different calorific values. With a fuel manager, the kiln always gets right amount of energy necessary for the burning process. This helps in avoiding overheating of the kiln and dramatically reduces operation costs. With stable and optimized processes, the entire cement plant will become much more efficient.
Trends
- Mergers & acquisitions of companies and their production locations
- Globalisation of market activities
- Increased competition – shorter product lifetime – higher risks
- Higher flexibility of production
- Reduction of quality management costs
Requirements
- Complete vertical and horizontal integration (from ERP to production floor – from receiving to shipping)
- One supplier for all components of all automation levels
- Automation with globally available HW, reusable SW and local support
- Increased automation of quality management
Siemens? added value
- Siemens? global presence
- Openness of SIMATIC
- TIA provides complete integration on a single HW and SW platform
- ERP, MES, production automation and logistic solutions
- Field instrumentation and electrical equipment through one-stop shopping
- Engineering, project management & execution
Sherzad Irani
Head Process Automation Business Development Siemens