OREANDA-NEWS. EUROCEMENT group is continually modernizing its plants with the aim of increasing the quality of its produce, reducing its energy consumption and improving its environmental friendliness.

In 2013, with a view to perfecting the manufacturing process, sets of grinding media made by the Vega firm (India) were purchased for two cement mills in the cement milling division. The use of high strength balls will allow the plant to increase the productivity of its cement mills and the lifespan of its grinding media, and also reduce electricity consumption.

One of the priorities of the plant's investment program is environmental friendliness. In 2013, with a view to reducing environmental impact, a new bag filter was installed in cement mill No.3 in the cement milling division.

In 2013, the gears of the main drive systems were replaced in raw material mills Nos.2,3,4, and 5 and cement mill No.3, along with the electric motors of the main drive systems of raw material mills Nos.2 and 6, which allowed operational reliability to be increased and the operational efficiency of equipment to be raised.

In a program to conserve energy consumption in a water pump station, a system of electricity revenue metering was introduced.

With a view to reducing energy consumption and strain on gears in the raw materials milling division, in 2013, work was begun on installing motor soft starters in the raw material mills. A steam boiler was also acquired within this project in 2013, the commissioning of which will provide the plant with a stable supply of thermal energy.

Within a project to automate production, a dispatch control system was developed for the raw materials milling division. The inclusion of additional equipment inspection points increases the reliability of control systems and reduces equipment downtime.

With a view to optimizing rotary furnace operations, increasing clinker quality, and reducing demands on energy supplies, modernization was carried out in 2013 on the gas analysis equipment on rotary clinker burning furnaces Nos.1 and 2.

Modernizing the system of technical record-keeping for compressed air usage has provided a means to optimize the operations of compression equipment, and provided additional control over the production and use of compressed air in addition to saving electricity.

The implementation in 2013 of a system for regulating the frequency of the drive units on air-quenching coolers in the rotary furnaces allows us not only to reduce electricity consumption, but also to raise the quality of produced clinker, along with increasing the equipment's operational reliability.

Another significant investment project of 2013 was the installation of a system of technical record-keeping for natural gas usage on all the plant's gas-consuming installations, which enables us to reduce energy consumption and allows for the operation of rotary furnaces to be optimized.