Cement, Energy and Environment

TECHNOLOGY UPGRADATION HIGH PERFORMANCE INLAND CEMENT TERMINALS Heiko Buschmann, IBAU HAMBURG, GERMANY, illustrates the unique requirements of inland terminals. Introduction Effective and timely distribution of cement to end customers is very important for cement producers. Although inland terminals are not very often included in the headlines, which mainly deal with imports and exports, nevertheless inland cement terminals cover wide range of applications and they are technically also very interesting. This article will outline three examples, practical which have recently been installed in different countries in the Far East. The examples show that waterways play an important role in cement distribution and that the designs clearly systems and concrete silos) for inland designs is more fixed on concrete silos , on the other hand the upstream and downstream cement handling technologies are more versatile. This means feeding and distribution at inland terminals can be either by ship, barge, railway or truck. Distribution can comprise bulk or bag cement or both. systems and flat storage designs have only limited applications for inland purposes. Technical requirements Inland terminals can become very complex when different loading and reloading possibilities have to be integrated and when either different cement products need to be stored or when bulk and bagged cement has to be distributed. Large terminals with storage capacities of up to 30 000 t are difficult to fill if only road tankers are used, even when the terminal uses multiple unloading devices. At 30 t capacity a road tanker has a very limited transport volume so that about 300 trucks are needed for one filling cycle of just 9000 t. A cement ship of 10 000 dwt can provide the same capacity in one cycle. Reloading capacities have to be designed to the terminal requirements. In the article 'Advanced Cement Dispatch' , have to follow the operator's needs. All three terminals Agure 1.Tennlnal with raflcar loading lanes. featured in World Cement's March 2010 issue, a have been constructed by the engineering company and technology provider IBAU HAMBURG. Terminal concepts Inland cement terminals have many features that are familiar from cement import and export terminals. While on the one hand the variety of terminal designs (flat storage halls, dome capacity and number of cements to be stored mainly affects the terminal design. Large capacities above 10 OOOt are adequately covered by concrete silos; smaller capacities below 1OOOOt are mainly designed by using steel silos or batteries of steel silos, especially when several cements have to be stored. For larger capacities and different · products concrete multi-cell silos are the practical choice. Dome distribution terminal with 2700 tph reloading was presented (Figure 1). Such high rates are only possible if ra ilcar loading or a combined truck/railcar loading is installed. For further details, log on to www. worldcement.com Courtesy: Bulk Materials Handling Review (World Cement), 2010, Pp 31-32. 27