Gujarat Ambuja - Redefining Operational Efficiency
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ENHANCING PRODUCTIVITY
GACL worked hard to reduce mining expenses. Cement
companies normally operate their own limestone mines. Mines were not only
extremely destructive environmentally, they were also expensive to operate.
The explosives used for mining were on the negative list of imports and
substantial costs were involved in implementing safety measures.
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In 1997, GACL sent its engineers to Australia to study
the extraction of metals. On their return, GACL implemented new technologies
that could access limestone in smaller areas where blasting was not
possible. To reduce the noise and vibration that occurred during the
conventional drilling, blasting and crushing process, the company introduced
an Australian device called Surface Miner.
The Surface Miner was not only energy efficient, it also recovered more
material from a given area. GACL engineers found that by focusing on kiln
operations, they could not only ensure cement quality, but could also reduce
power consumption. A company official said, “You have to make sure that the
reactivity is such in the burning zone that whatever you burn is converted
into clinker[3] minerals.
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And all this depends on the burning process, which we
had no way of monitoring from the outside. Inadequate heating yielded
inferior quality cement and over cooking made the clinker harder to grind.”
In the early 1990s, during a visit to a cement plant in Japan, GACL
engineers learnt that factors like retention time (time elapsed in the kiln
and the speed of burning), temperature, and rate of cooling could be judged
from the microstructure of the clinker minerals. The Japanese engineers
physically scanned the clinker pieces extracted from the kiln under a
microscope to determine on the basis of their experience, whether the
clinker had been heated to the right temperature.
After undergoing extensive training, GACL's engineers tried the above
procedure at their own plants and successfully brought down power costs from
120 units/ton to 90 units/ton. At GACL's second plant in Ambuja Nagar, kiln
productivity ranged between 2800-3000 tonnes.
While setting up the third plant in the area, GACL engineers realized that
if they had a larger pre-heater (in which the limestone was heated before
being fed into the kiln), they would be able to put more material into the
kiln and thereby increase production. However, the company's supplier of
pre-heaters said it was not possible to make a bigger pre-heater without
modifying the kiln. The engineers told the supplier to make a bigger
pre-heater, while they themselves modified the existing kiln.
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CUTTING COSTS - POWER
CUTTING COSTS - FREIGHT
THE FUTURE
EXHIBIT I - GACL - STATE WISE PLANT CAPACITY
EXHIBIT III - VARIOUS AWARDS WON BY GACL
[3] The
raw materials for cement production, limestone, clay, silica and gypsum, are
fed into a kiln after grinding and blending. The mixture is heated at
1300-1400 degrees for some time. After dehydration and calcination (removal
of water vapor and carbon dioxide respectively), a dark and hard material is
obtained, which is called clinker. This intermediate material is further
processed with additional chemicals and materials and eventually ground into
cement.
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