Articles on the cement industry from Global Cement

John Kline, VP of technical expertise at Lafarge, gave a well-received paper at the 54th IEEE-IAS PCA Cement Industry Technical Conference in San Antonio, Texas, on 14 - 17 May 2012 entitled 'Cement and CO₂ - a victim of success.'

IEEE-IAS PCA cement industry technical meeting 2012

A video by Global Cement of the IEEE-IAS PCA cement industry technical meeting 2012 in San Antonio, Texas, 14 - 17 May 2012, featuring a tour of the event's exhibition and brief visits to the event's two cement plant field trip destinations (and including footage of a blast in the cement quarry at Cemex Balcones).

Pakistan exports cement to a number of neighbouring countries and territories further afield. In the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years, it exported mainly to Afghanistan to the north, a trend which is continuing in the current 2012 fiscal year. Pakistan also exports to Iraq, South Africa, Tanzania and Mozambique. Recent speculation about how the end of Saudi Arabia's cement import ban will influence Pakistan's exports are examined in this article, which also gives a summary of supply and demand in the region.

The United States of America is the third largest¹ and third most populous¹ nation on the planet and is the richest in terms of GDP.² It has achieved steady economic growth throughout most of its history through the application of free-markets to almost every area of its economy. Historically a strong manufacturer, the country has suffered during the ongoing economic crisis, which has strongly hit construction and the cement industry.

Wikov Gear s.r.o. is a leading manufacturer of gearboxes for drives of cement mills and kilns in central and eastern Europe. One of its main products for the cement industry is side drive gearboxes. These gearboxes are in particular demand owing to their compact design with a small footprint, high efficiency and the low wear of the meshing girth gear.

Wikov's side drive gearboxes have gone through extensive development and innovation. Based on new requirements in the market and experience obtained from operation of these gearboxes Wikov implemented major research and development with the objective to offer customers an innovative product with extended output parameters up to 6MW, including innovative design of a separate lubrication system. This project was implemented with financial support from state budget funds through the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic. Research and development was conducted along three lines:

1. Research into the dynamic behaviour of these gearboxes with the objective to be able to predict weak points of the drive in all conditions established in practice and to create an extremely stable and reliable gearbox;

2. Development of a separate lubrication system, so that any gearing and bearings in the gearbox that are very sensitive to oil quality were lubricated by a separate lubrication circuit and sealed from its environment (in particular the area of the gear rim);

3. Identification of an analytical method to simulate the behaviour of large gear wheels during heat treatment.

All of these tasks had only one objective: the design of a reliable and stable gearbox with low maintenance requirements. Let us focus in particular on the first and second targets, which seem to be the most interesting in terms of mill operation.