Vivek Singh, Sales Director – Thermal & Exports, South West Asia, Calderys India Refractories Limited, talks about innovations that help to create tailor-made solutions and improve lifespan of refractories.

Tell us about the composition and build of the refractories evolving over the years.
The composition of our refractories is an IP property of the organisation. Let us discuss the focus of our company in terms of making sure the refractories adapt to the operating conditions. Operating conditions in cement plants are changing drastically. The demand of cement is growing by 8 to 9 per cent annually, which means that along with new capacities, utilisation rate of the cement plants has to increase as well. This could be achieved through reducing shutdown days as well as number of shutdowns. Hence Our focus is to provide solutions, which help our customers to achieve both of these objectives.
There are two kinds of application areas. One is non-critical or low critical, where the performance of refractories is one-two years. In these cases, performance is not a challenge. However, in the critical application areas, the life of refractories used to be 4 to 6 months earlier. This led to shutdowns every 4 to 6 months. Our consistent focus has been to increase the lifespan of these critical areas.
To support this, we have launched different variants based on operating conditions.
• Supramon Brand: Nano-bonded castables have an average lifespan of more than 9 months
• Calde RDS: Ready shaped solution refractions are based on the application area and have a life of 1-2 years.
• Calderys Shotcrete and gunning solutions: Mechanised Installation techniques to reduce shutdown time and improve casting performance and safety at site
These refractory variants help cement manufacturers avoid mid-term shutdowns and reduce shutdown duration. A lot of research and development goes into achieving these performance enhancements.

What is the best kind of refractory a cement plant can use for maximum output?
For critical areas, ready-shaped solutions are the best. Depending on the application areas it gives 1-2 years of lifespan. The burner pipe and bull nose refractory lasts for 18 months to 2 years, and tips casting lasts for 1 to 2 years depending on the
fuels, raw materials and operating conditions at cement plant.
If cement manufacturers are using a lot of alternative fuels like various types of wastes, then chemical attacks on the refractories are more and the lifespan may decrease to one year. However, where the operating conditions are more consistent, fossil fuel is used in larger percentages, that is when the refractory lasts for a longer lifespan of up to
2 years.
Primary difference between performance of Ready-Shape Refractory and Nano-Bonded Refractory is casting at site Vs Calderys plant and amount of Alternate Fuel used at Cement plant. In ready shapes large part of installation and dryout happens in factory conditions, this process is much more controlled, hence the lifespan is longer.

Tell us about the impact of your refractory solutions on the production and cost efficiency of cement plants.
Production efficiency comes from low shutdowns. If the cement plants have to take a shutdown for 15-20 days every 5 to 6 months versus taking only one shutdown, the number of days of operations increases by approx 20 days. This means they gain additional production and this is how our refractories help them achieve higher production, higher profits and achieve efficient outputs.
Our focus is to help cement plants increase their outputs with the available infrastructure by reducing the need for shutdowns and possibilities of stopping production.

What is the role of automation and technology in building your solutions?
Our plants are mostly automated. This is primarily because our formulations are very critical and require precision. A deviation of more than one per cent or any RM can lead to rejection. Our plants are therefore largely automated for blending and castable expertise.
Packaging and other functions are a mix of automation and manual processes in our plants. Amongst the five plants, three of our plants are fully automated, from raw material to packaging. The other plants are relatively less automated and have some manual processes for non-critical activities.
However, we do believe, the more automation we have, the better our product will be and this would improve our safety performance as well.

Tell us about the audits, maintenance and services provided by your organisation for refractories installed.
We have a separate arm in the organisation for the maintenance and audits of refractories. This arm is called Project Application and Services. This department provides project management, design & installation services.
It specialises in predictive maintenance with the use of some hi-tech equipment which are used for understanding the life of refractories under the operating conditions. Without shutting down the plants it indicates the need of maintenance or not. We also have highly efficient mechanised installation – gunning and shotcreting are the two automated installation services that we provide. Among these shotcreting is the superior process, but an expensive one, because of higher fixed costs.
Between gunning, shotcreting and manual casting, in a day shotcreting can do around 60-80 tonnes of installations, gunning would achieve approx 20 tonnes and manually would be cheaper, but much less. As the aim is to reduce the shutdown days, reducing the installation time is important. Using these installation techniques will help speed up the installation and bring back the cement plant
operations sooner.

What are the major challenges your organisation faces with respect to cement plant refractories?
In terms of making, our primary raw materials are minerals. Virgin mineral availability is depleting across the geography globally. Mining is getting restrictive with governments capping the mining capacities. Hence, raw materials are becoming costlier and will continue to be so over the years. For example superior quality Indian bauxite is becoming difficult to procure and we have to depend on imports. This is leading to cost escalations. Our recipe is our USP and we do not want to compromise on the quality of the raw materials, to ensure superior performance.
Operating conditions at the customer’s end can also be challenging. If we have to do regular or frequent shutdowns and light ups, then thermal shocks take place, which abuse the refractories, hampering its quality. If the operating conditions are consistent, then the lifespan of the refractories would be much better.
Thirdly, most cement plants these days use alternative fuels, which leads to a lot of chemical interaction with the refractories. These could be alkaline, chlorine or any different chemical. If we do not know which alternative fuel is used and we have provided a refractory solution, then the refractory life is impacted. That is why we generally propose to our customers – cement manufacturers – to inform us about the composition of the fuel, so that we design or tailor-make the refractory accordingly. Otherwise, the life of the refractory will be challenging.

Are refractories for every customer and cement plant customised as per their requirement or do you have a standardised offering?
It is a mix of both. In some cases, specific refractories are designed for specific plants, which is unique for the plant. When we know the fuels used are regular or generic, that is when we provide our standard makes. Even for the same customer for different plants we provide different solutions based on operating conditions.

Tell us about some innovations in your organisation that the cement industry can look forward to.
We are constantly working on following innovation themes:
Fuel cost saving: Energy is one of the major costs for cement players, hence reducing the energy cost is what we are working on. Our product, Hysil Calcium Silicate Insulation, is the flag bearer in this pursuit.
Ready-shaped solution for higher life: It is fairly new in the country. Caledrys brought this technology to India and started providing the same in the country, through local production.
Speed of installation and safety: We are working on this to make sure that installation speed is faster and and safe. Safety is our first priority.
These are the three things we are working on in terms of innovation and we wish to continuously improve our solution offerings.

Kanika Mathur