In this world, there are two categories – the driven, and the driver. I do not remember who said that "behind every successful man there is an even more successful woman", but I do know that he/she actually meant to say women are the drivers of men – well, at least mostly so. The relationship between a leader and his team is also akin to that between a driver and the driven. There are many more such examples, which would tend to reinforce this hypothesis of two broad categories, namely the movers and shakers of this world on one side, and the moved and the shaken, on the other. Even in the industrial world, among all the electrical and mechanical equipment, we find an identical situation – on one hand we have prime-movers like engines, electric motors, or turbines or springs which are the drivers driving the machines like crushers, mixers, ships, trucks, helicopters or even watches. The similarity here between men and machines, is truly intriguing.
Now, what if I were to say, that there is someone, or something, standing between the prime-movers and the rotors, somewhat like the "middlemen" we encounter everyday in every transaction? This someone is none other than the unsung hero of this issue of your magazine – the ubiquitous, but unnoticed Gearbox. For the information of the uninitiated, a gearbox provides changes in torque and speed while transmitting power between a power source and another device to be rotated. So, this specialised middleman is more like a Power Broker, in the human context!
Gearboxes do not make for a very exciting topic, particularly for the laymen, however much we may try to liven up the discussion with non-technical information and trivia. Gearbox remains a boring, dull, uninteresting subject. It matters little that we encounter a gearbox every day without knowing (?) in the power train of our cars, at one end of the spectrum, and in our watches, at the other minuscule end of the spectrum. However, it is true that gearboxes are very important pieces of equipment in any cement plant, and play a singularly essential role in transmitting power in mills, VRM?s, crushers, conveyors, bucket elevators, pumps and many others – in fact, gearboxes are all over the place in a cement plant. Obviously, it stands to reason that gearboxes are discussed and debated about from time to time, taking stock of what?s been happening in the market, particularly in terms of developments in technology, especially in terms of capacity and features. For example, the push for higher and higher capacities in a single Vertical Roller Mill has in turn pushed the frontiers of gearbox technology forward, in the areas of materials science, heat treatment, anti-friction bearings, etc. In other words, the capacity of VRM?s are today somewhat limited by gearbox capacities which is pegged today at 7 MW on the higher side limit, with the 3 or 4 leading gearbox manufacturers of the world working hard to extend this limit. Meanwhile, some reputed VRM designers – in collaboration with a cement majors – have innovated multi-drive technology with which one can go up to transmitting 19 MW of power in a VRM through a breakthrough idea of synchronised radially arranged multiple gearboxes.
To set up a captive power plant (CPP ) or not – is a question that the promoter of any cement plant has to answer, and the answer to this question has been fluctuating between yes and no, depending on various factors like supply /demand scenario of power in the relevant region, availability of fuel at competitive prices, quality of power (frequency, voltage, continuity) from the grid and its weighted cost, etc. Evidently, the cost vs benefit analysis of investment in a CPP will depend on these factors, all which are dynamic. In this issue, we delve into this interesting question, and try to find some answers for you from people in the know of things. So, this issue is essentially all about POWER – some captive, and some transmitted though gearboxes, with or without your knowledge!