ABB offers tools to help industrial facilities and corporations reduce energy cost, improve their energy efficiency, and manage their carbon footprint.
Cement industry is among the biggest consumers of electrical energy. A vast amount of energy is used at every stage of the process, accounting for more than 50 per cent of total production costs. Effective deployment of IT/automation in the cement industry will help lower energy consumption across processes through better control and optimization.
Expert optimizer (EO): This is a computer-based system for controlling, stabilizing and optimizing industrial processes. Due to its state-of-the-art optimization technologies the software helps one to make the best operational decisions accurately and consistently at all times. EO provides advanced process techniques, including linear and non-linear model predictive control, fuzzy logic and neural networks. Says Chander K, Technology Manager, India Operations Center, Process Automation, Bangalore, India, ?With our range of EO modules, we cover the most critical components and equipment in a cement plant: kiln, alternative fuel, mills and blending.?
Kiln optimization: The kiln process is intrinsically unstable and influenced by long time delays and large perturbations. EO firstly stabilizes the process before driving the key manipulated variables to the process limits. The benefits are significant: EO will control kiln like the best operator performing at his optimum 365/24/7. Alternative fuel management: Burning alternative fuels can lead to instability in the clinker manufacturing process. EO controls, mixes and monitors rates of alternative fuels to ensure consistent burning, whilst ensuring that the kiln does not become unstable due to changes in fuel calorific value.
Mill optimisation: Grinding makes up a big portion of the electrical energy consumed on the plant, thus the efficiency of grinding operations has a big influence on the energy bill. EO optimises your grinding circuit to increase throughput and secure consistent output quality while lowering energy consumption.
Material blending: Stable and correct proportioned raw meal is essential for energy-efficient clinker production. Cement blended at the right proportions is essential to meet the specifications of finished cements and thus to deliver a quality product to end-customers. EO provides solutions for both raw material blending and cement blending.
Energy manager: This is based on real time data from process monitoring systems, automation systems, and production planning systems, coupled with the information available from energy providers. Energy Manager includes planning and scheduling tools to help one optimize energy use and supply, energy balance management tools to help one get the best price for the energy one requires, and reporting tools to help one monitor energy consumption, costs, efficiency and other energy-related information. Its modular structure allows an implementation to start small and grow over time.
Energy Manager is scalable from a single-facility energy reporting application up to a multi-facility company-wide system serving hundreds of users as they manage energy planning and procurement for your corporation.
Knowledge manager production scheduler: This supports managers in providing them with an optimal schedule that is easily adapted to changing goals and operational constraints with numerous features such as summarized and detailed visualization of schedule, forecast of inventory and of energy consumption, scenario management, sales forecast screen and settings for energy tariff amongst many others. The benefits are realized in terms of optimized short-term production, reduced overall production costs and increased equipment efficiency and increase efficiency and agility of planning tasks to name a few.