Chapter Seven: Benefits of an Efficient AI-based Process Control System

The cement industry is experiencing a period of relevant changes that include its decided adherence to the ESG concept (environmental, social, governance); that is, its decision to reduce environmental impacts and build a fairer world, applying the best practices in administrative terms. Therefore, organizations that contribute to the future of the planet and humanity; tend to grow and stand out in the market.

A fundamental factor in adhering to the ESG concept is the implementation of an efficient process control system.

What is Process Control?

Process Control is a term that refers to the supervision and verification of variables inherent in every process to reduce variability in the final product, reduce costs, increase efficiency and reduce environmental impact in an organization.

The benefits of Process Control are:

• Improves product quality.
• Energy-saving.
• Safety in operations.
• Optimize operations.
• Easy access to process data.
• Increases productivity.

Of course, the cement industry has a set of parameters that make up its process control.

Can AI support you with efficient process control?

Sure! The best option for efficient control of cement factory processes is PSCL's solutions, based on AI (artificial intelligence).

What is PSCL?

PSCL (Process Solutions) is a company with headquarters in Edmonton, Canada. For nearly four decades, PSCL has been working with the cement industry with a simple and successful philosophy, listening to its customers and acting on their needs.

PSCL offers technological solutions to optimize cement quality, internal and external logistics, automation, and specialized technical support.

This article discusses PSCL solutions for process control and cement quality;

• Stockpile Management Suite - SMS;
• Raw Mix Control System;
• Laboratory Data Management System - LDMS;
• Waste Fuel Information Management System - WFIMS.

In addition, to mention of cement distribution systems.

Let's start with the efficient control of raw materials...!

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Stockpile Management Suite - SMS

SMS delivers significant improvements in quarry optimization and utilization, reducing your raw material preparation costs. With consistent chemistry, maintaining quality control of finished products becomes routine.

Quarry segregation maximizes the operational value, extending the life of the quarry by separating the run on mine into piles of specific quality ranges (eg. high MgO, high grade, low grade and off-spec), ensuring material is efficiently used.

SMS reveals trends in stockpile quality through historical analysis to enable correlation with both upstream and downstream process quality. Calculate material chemistry before reclamation and get proactive notification of target deviation so plant operators can take corrective action earlier saving both time and money.

Since 2005 – with over 100 installations worldwide – the SMS has been providing critical insight, control and process feedback to plant operators and enabling plants to optimize raw material quality.

What are the Key Benefits of SMS?

1. Increases revenues by enabling the segregation of material by quality parameters
2. Reduces costs by minimizing the use of expensive sweeteners with better planning for additive management
3. Reduces costs by removing the need for additional analyzer or hardware to provide accurate material chemistry to downstream applications such as PSCL’s Raw Mix Control System (RMCS)
4. Reduces costs of expensive trials by investigating alternate stacking or reclaiming approaches (eg. will additional windrows increase the homogenization?)
5. Reduces waste by providing notifications and alarms before the stockpile chemistry is off-spec

Pile Historian Tool

Track pile chemistry and see material quality in your raw feed. Pile Historian gives the insight from run-of-mine data to the stockpile.

Key Features

• Trending of elemental, mass, numerical analyzer performance and tuning values
• Grid/textual display of data, X-Y scatter plots
• Statistical Quality Control (SQC) chart
• Export to Microsoft? Excel?, Word? and text formats

What do PSCL customers think about the SMS solution?

"We have found the pile modeller to be very beneficial for predicting and minimizing chemistry changes from our pre-blend pile." - Nicholas Ewing, Quality Coordinator, Argos USA – Roberta Plant

For more information about PSCL's SMS solution after reading this article, share your email, and with great pleasure we will send the technical brochure.

Let's continue with the efficient control of the raw mix...!

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Raw Mix Control System - RMCS

RMCS provides comprehensive control and monitoring of the raw mix process, reducing chemistry variation and time to prepare, and elevating quality. With RMCS integrated into your operations, you’ll improve profitability on every batch while getting product to market more quickly.

The RMCS control algorithm integrates a fitness calculation which determines an optimal solution. The resulting feeder set points are automatically sent to the process control system (PCS).

The natural variation in the composition of the raw materials is dynamically adjusted for, resulting in a more accurate prediction and control of resulting chemistry.

The RMCS utilizes high frequency analyses from pre-mill cross-belt analyzers, and lower frequency post-mill x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzers. Dynamic correction of the cross-belt analyzer’s results can be automatically calculated and applied within the RMCS.

Users are notified when a scheduled analysis is not received, statistical process control (SPC) rules are triggered, or a solution cannot be found.

What are the Key Benefits of RMCS?

1. Increases raw meal and clinker quality
2. Reduces standard deviation
3. Reduces expenses by considering material costs
4. Reduces maintenance costs
5. Minimizes costs by integrating with existing analyzers and control systems
6. Reduces emission violations by enforcing constraints
7. Reduces time with comprehensive record keeping and reporting options

What do PSCL customers think about the RMCS solution?

"The RMCS is helping us control the quality in real time so we get a feed to the kiln that is as uniform as possible. We use multiple products from PSCL." - Jakob Vikingsson, Quality Control Manager, Lehigh Hanson Cement, Edmonton

For more information about PSCL's RMCS solution after reading this article, share your email, and with great pleasure we will send the technical brochure.

We complete the discussion on cement quality control by now dealing about efficient laboratory management.

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Laboratory Data Management System - LDMS

LDMS is unique in its focus on cement manufacturing. LDMS integrates with your laboratory equipment – x-ray fluorescence (XRF) and cross-belt analyzers, process control systems – to automate the creation of samples and their results.

Correlated bi-directional exchanges of plant process and quality data ensures that the people needing the story behind the sample have it with no delay.

LDMS integrates the lab and plant processes. With over 60 installations in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, we are the world leader in laboratory information systems for the cement industry.

What are the Key Benefits of LDMS?

Powerful built-in reporting tools – complemented by integration with standard business applications – allow data to be thoroughly and easily analyzed. With that you will get:

1. Increase efficiency and reduce errors: automated sample creation and test result entry
2. Industry standard tests: customized for laboratory-specific requirements
3. Reduce training time: intuitive user interface
4. Reduce product variability and off-spec material: integrated SPC rules and notifications
5. Reduce rework and missed work: track samples from creation to completion of testing
6. Reduce work: automated report generation and distribution
7. Simplify audit and compliance reporting

For more information about PSCL's LDMS solution after reading this article, share your email, and with great pleasure we will send the technical brochure.

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Waste Fuel Information Management System - WFIMS

Waste fuels are a market opportunity to add a revenue stream to you kiln. PSCL’s Waste Fuel Information Management System (WFIMS) is a key ingredient that allows you to capitalize on this opportunity.

WFIMS helps you meet the challenges of regulatory requirements and safe handling of hazardous and non-hazardous waste fuels, reducing the amount of waste going to long-term storage or landfills.

Waste material tracking is live from the moment it enters the facility, through to destruction. Built-in reports provide complete traceability of pre-qualified waste streams, shipments, containers and analytical samples. Quickly and efficiently create additional customized reports.

With over 25 installations in North America and Australia, WFIMS provides critical safety and regulatory compliance for waste fuel handling facilities.

What are the Key Benefits of WFIMS?

1. Increase safety: Enforce regulatory frameworks and improve the workflow between receiving, health and safety, laboratory and unloaders
2. Increase revenue: Streamline the qualification of generator waste streams
3. Reduce costs, increase safety: Accurately track shipments of bulk or container fuels from receipt to destruction
4. Reduce costs: Automate the regulatory requirements (e.g. eManifest with USEPA), and simplify internal reporting
5. Reduce risks: Minimize potential for data entry mistakes or acceptance of unknown or untested waste material
6. Increase efficiency: Eliminate multiple, manual data entry for tracking, inventory, billing and regulatory reporting
7. Increase efficiency: Optimize unloading and blending to achieve quality and calorific targets

WFIMS synchronizes with your ERP system. Our pre-built interfaces work with all popular ERP software, and new interfaces are quickly customized for all other systems:

• SAP
• Oracle
• JD Edwards
• All others that support data exchange

For more information about PSCL's WFIMS solution after reading this article, share your email, and with great pleasure we will send the technical brochure.

Let's continue discussing PSCL solutions for efficient internal and external logistics.

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Cement Distribution Management - CDM

From sales and marketing to the physical loading of product and back to the financial system, CDM will optimize the process so you can maximize profitability.

• CDM will get the orders into the alley which will minimize time on scale.
• Order Management provides a number of tools to improve your customer communication and the product flow.
• Loading Management is the number one cement loading software in North America and is the heart of CDM. Self-Service Loading and Plant Portal solutions incorporate all the functionality of Loading Management, then go further by controlling access to your site, directing traffic and minimizing time to scale.

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More information?

For more technical and commercial information and case studies of each technology presented in this article, contact the consultants and specialists PSCL/ICC.

ICC - Independent Cement Consultants is a technical-commercial representative PSCL

Contact us

• Colin Wigelsworth - [email protected]
• Jo?o Butkus - [email protected]
• Juan Ortega - [email protected]

Copyright and Credits: The trademarks Stockpile Management Suite, Raw Mix Control System, Laboratory Data Management System, Waste Fuel Information Management System, Cement Distribution Management, Order Management, Loading Management, Self-Service Loading, Plant Portal, logos, images, technical information published in this article belong to Process Solutions Canada Limited - PSCL.