Cape Girardeau's low cost 100,000 ton clinker expansion

摘要

Lone Star Industries, Inc. (LSI) operates a cement plant at Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The original 3000 TPD plant was designed and supplied by Allis Chalmers for Marquette Cement Company and commissioned in 1981. Various improvements throughoutthe years brought the plant capacity up to 3750 TPD before the upgrade project or 25 % over the original design capacity.Fuller Company was requested to study the operation of the plant's raw grinding and pyro-processing systems and evaluate if an increase in the nominal clinker production could be achieved. The impetus for the evaluation was Lone Star's desire to meet thefuture cement sales demand for the Mississippi Valley market. The evaluation team involved Fuller process and mechanical specialists who visited the site and surveyed the existing plant operations to determine the limitations of the process machinery,recommend operational changes and develop a report with their findings. All recommendations had to emphasize re-using as much of the existing equipment as possible in order to arrive at an economically justifiable solution, in terms of both capitalinvestment and the shortest possible downtime.Based on several process and mechanical audits, and a proposal submitted in July 1997, Fuller Company was awarded a contract in September 1997 to modify the raw mill and pyroprocessing areas of the plant to achieve a guaranteed clinker production of 4000TPD, 60 kcal/kg fuel savings and an 8% increase in the raw mill grinding capacity.At time of contract signing it was clearly brought forth, that in order to meet the tight schedule forced by the plants' normal winter outage, both LSI and Fuller must work closely together as a team which resulted in a successful project meeting allguarantees in 9 months.