Predictive Maintenance as a Service for Cement Industry: An Overview
The cement manufacturing industry is one of the oldest and most critical manufacturing industries for the global civilization. It has witnessed unparalleled growth at the heart of most economic developments and international growth this decade. Fortune Insights report says, the global cement market will grow from $326.80 billion in 2021 to $458.64 billion in 2028, a steep 5.1% globally. It is then no wonder that cement plants face pressure for process and asset maintenance.
Cement Manufacturing Process & Need For Predictive Maintenance
Cement manufacturing is a highly intricate continuous process involving multiple ingredients and steps. Here is an overview of the entire cement manufacturing process, highlighting the machinery used at each stage, with a focus on cement plant maintenance.
Cement Industry Predictive Maintenance checklist:
- Extractors: Used to quarry raw materials, such as limestone and clay.
- Crushers: Crush high rock piles into coarse powders known as raw meal.
- Blenders & Mixers: Mix the crushed raw meal in the correct proportions.
- Grinders: Further grind the raw material to liberate different minerals in the ore.
- Rotary Kiln: Heats the raw meal to 1450 degrees Celsius and then cools it.
- Assembly Belts & Conveyors: Transport the cement for packing and dispatching to customers.
These processes and machines must operate in tandem, without interruptions, to ensure a high-quality cement production process. Unplanned downtime in even one of these machines can severely impact efficiency and quality, as well as the health and safety of personnel on-site. Implementing predictive maintenance in cement plant maintenance can help mitigate these risks, ensuring continuous operation and optimal performance.
Common causes for machine downtime in a cement plant
- Loose nuts, bolts, springs, plates, spring rods, flywheel, bearings, shaft, coupling housing, hammer rotor
- Motor failure, Conveyor belt, breakage, bearing failure, stretching rod breakage, breakage of separator blade
- Fan bearing breakage, fan unbalance
- Gear knocking, gear tooth wear, gear deformation, gear spitting and spalling
- Axle spindle breakage, crusher bearings failure, slip tape breakage
- Disc liner shift
- Rolling mill cracks, tubing failure, pump failure, spoke breakage
- Grate plate breakage
Why asset maintenance in cement plants is a necessity?
Asset maintenance in cement plants is critical for several reasons:
- Extensive Repair & Replacement Costs: Proper maintenance helps avoid costly repairs and replacements.
- Chances of Industrial Safety Hazards & Accidents: Regular maintenance reduces the risk of accidents, ensuring a safer working environment.
- Over-Maintenance of Equipment: Excessive maintenance can lead to unnecessary wear and tear on machinery.
- Harsh Operating Environment: Cement plants operate under challenging conditions, requiring robust maintenance practices.
- Dynamic Environment: The nature of cement production necessitates proactive decision-making to adapt to changing conditions.
- Enable Remote Monitoring & Control: Effective maintenance strategies, including predictive maintenance in cement plants, enhance agility and resilience.
In summary, implementing effective cement plant maintenance practices not only mitigates risks but also optimizes operations, ensuring long-term sustainability and efficiency.
How can Predictive Maintenance as a Service help?
With the stakes so high and a constantly changing environment, real-time machine diagnostics are necessary to empower plant managers with the correct data. IIoT can enable this by enabling a 360-degree view of interconnected assets across the plant. Predictive maintenance as a service allows plant managers in cement managers to move away from reactive measures like reactive maintenance and preventive maintenance to a predictive one, where critical machines don’t have to be pulled down unless there is a specific anomaly.
At a grassroots level, predictive maintenance as a service by IU for cement plants can be implemented by placing sensors at strategic positions on the machines. Vibration analysis of mechanical equipment components such as air compressors, belt drives, conveyors, fans, blowers, kiln rollers, motor bearings, and vertical and horizontal mills can help predict anomalies. This cost-effective approach to predictive maintenance in cement not only enhances cement plant maintenance but also minimizes unplanned downtime, ultimately improving operational efficiency and safety.
The Predictive Maintenance as a service solution by Infinite Uptime involves collecting data, analysis & computing of the triaxial vibrations, temperature and noise of the mechanical equipment on edge at real-time via a patented edge computing system. The data then is monitored & analyzed in real-time, and a machine health score is assigned. A machine with a lower health score is flagged to the plant supervisor or plant engineer with a diagnostic assessment of the probable cause for the anomaly and a recommendation on improving the same. Not just that, if not considered severe yet, but still significant; the fault is continuously monitored, with relevant parameters like temperature, vibration etc., to assure that it does not aggravate the status quo. This information can be made available in real-time to the appropriate people at their fingertips. An access-based dashboard ensures that you get access to the most relevant machine data for the plant from single machine access for a plant operator to multiple machines across the plant access for a plant head and a multi-plant machine score for a manufacturing head. Let’s look at a case study around how we helped a top Indian cement manufacturer reduce 250 hours of downtime.
Conclusion
Today, the cement industry is on the cusp of digital transformation, fueled by rising demand and cut-throat competition and increasingly stringent regulations. The pressure on the cement industry’s assets, processes, and people to be on the top of their game has never been higher. In such a scenario, Predictive Maintenance as a Service for your cement plant can help avoid machine failures and the associated unplanned downtime and the quality of the output cement and the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of the cement plants. It improves machine availability and performance, also saving costs for repairs & spare parts. But most importantly, it arms you with resilience & agility during unpredictable times via remote monitoring and proactive maintenance when needed the most.
