Economy & Market

Increasing Process Efficiency

Published

2 years ago

April 17, 2024

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The efficient handling of cement, from production to transportation, is paramount. This article is a case study about the transformative impact of ELGi’s oil-free compressors adopted by a leading Indian cement major.

India is the second-largest cement-producing country in the world1, accounting for more than 8 per cent of the global installed capacity2. The cement industry is vital to global infrastructure development, providing the building blocks for our roads, bridges and buildings. With a major infrastructure push from the government and technological advancements for environment-friendly processes, the cement industry is looking forward to promising growth potential. Also, with the excellent quality and quantity of limestone deposits throughout the country, the cement industry promises enormous growth potential.
Initiatives by the Government of India, such as the expansion of railways, housing for all and smart cities, combined with the additional requirement of cement for urban households, will lead to more consumption in the coming years. Cement is a sector that relies heavily on industrial machinery and processes to ensure efficient production. Among this crucial equipment is the air compressor, which plays a pivotal role in cement transportation.

Cement production in India
With the increase in overall requirement for cement, there is also a need for time-efficient and quick processes to meet the ever-growing demands. Manufacturing cement involves complex processes such as mixing, drying and grinding a mixture of clay, limestone and silica into a composite mass. This mixture is then heated and burnt in a preheater and kiln. Following this, when the mixture is cooled in an air-cooling system, clinker is produced, a semi-finished form of cement. The clinker is cooled by air and ground with gypsum to form cement. The material’s bulky nature results in high transportation costs that have led cement manufacturers to set up clinker units near limestone mines and grinding units near coastal areas to help cut down logistics costs considerably. However, some challenges need to be resolved to enhance process efficiency.

Customer challenge
A prominent Indian cement major with numerous plants and units spread across different countries looked out for an efficient compressed air solution to facilitate unloading cement from ships into bulkers and transferring cement to their plant silos. It is vital to quickly load and unload the cement to avoid holding the ship for too long in the dock and prevent penalties. Further, bulkers are used for transporting cement to the cement silos, which also requires swift implementation to avoid trucks lining up. While handling large volumes of material, transporting cement through pipes is more efficient than packing in bags. Compressed air is crucial for quickly loading and unloading cement from trucks.

Application of compressed air
A single silo has the capacity of accommodating nine trucks filled with cement. For unloading, pipes are connected to the trucks. A pipe with compressed air discharged at two bars of pressure goes into the truck, and another pipe is connected to move the cement into the silo. Once the pressure reaches zero, it signals that the entire material has been transferred to the silo, and the pipe is removed. A similar process transfers the cement from ships to trucks. It is crucial that the equipment doesn’t break down during the entire process and the air supply is sufficient. The downtime also needs to be minimal to maintain operational quality and speed.

Smart savings
The cement major chose ELGi air compressors because they were indigenous with low maintenance costs. The cement major shifted from reciprocating air compressors to ELGi’s OF 132 L oil-free screw air compressors after a careful audit of their needs.
ELGi’s solution reduced power consumption and faster cement transfer, supported by quick customer service response and reliable technical support. The ELGi team also retrofitted its existing variable-frequency drives (VFDs) on its air compressors to regulate motor speed for cases when there was less cement than usual to unload. As bulkers unloaded faster with ELGi compressors, fewer bulkers were needed overall, thus resulting in huge savings.
Here are some key benefits of the shift to ELGi’s Oil Free Compressed Air Solution:

ELGi’s Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) system makes operating air compressors easy.
Earlier, it would take 45 minutes to unload a truck, but after using ELGi air compressors, unloading time reduced to 20 minutes, a drop of 50 per cent.
Since ELGi air compressors use less energy, the customer’s power consumption is reduced, translating into significant cost savings.

ELGi’s oil-free and energy-efficient air compressors helped the cement major to increase its productivity. Ship unloading into bulkers and bulkers unloading into cement silos at the plant both happened quicker than earlier, resulting in substantial time and cost savings. Low maintenance costs and reduced power consumption also increased efficiency.
The cement manufacturer has switched to ELGi air compressors for its plants all over India. As the cement industry grows, ELGi air compressors will continue to enable the Indian cement major to transport cement faster, ensuring high energy efficiency, productivity and significant energy and maintenance cost savings.

References
1 beeindia.gov.in
2www.ibef.org

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TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race

Published

3 days ago

April 27, 2026

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Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology

India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.

According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.

Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.

The Regulatory Push Is Real

The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.

Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.

Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem

Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.

The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.

Engineering a Made-in-India Answer

At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.

Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.

Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.

The Investment Case Is Now

The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.

The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.

The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.

The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.

About The Author

Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.

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