Maintenance and production improvements with ASDs

The cement plant La Cruz Azul SCL is located in the center of Mexico, about 70 km north of Mexico City. The management of Cruz Azul established objectives in all its departments to reduce production costs. The optimization department and the management agreed to give major support to the projects, and the heads of departments committed themselves to develop new ideas to lower the production costs of the different processes by using the latest technology (if necessary) available on the market. The experience of the authors' department of optimization suggested focusing on new fans as a relevant area. These fans are widely used during various steps of the process, and the possibility to analyze this would mean a change of the flow from these dampers to variable speed drives. The large capacity fans have two medium voltage motors and with dampers to lower the flow capacity of the fans to a range of 60-80%. The fast advancing new technology of variable speed drives of medium and low voltage, where the equipment becomes more and more efficient and cheaper, contributes to the profitability of the projects to be carried out. Cruz Azul saw the opportunity to use two exhaust fans of 1000 HP in kiln 8. This paper shows the development of the projects, from the beginning of the analysis to the application.