Burners for white cement kilns: Calcia Cruas (France)

Gal LE PIVER, Senior RnD Engineer, Fives Pillard, Marseille (France)

PRESENTATION
For the manufacture of white cement, the burning process is subject to special requirements and the burner design must take into account certain criteria: Even with a very low secondary air temperature, white cement manufacture requires a higher sintering temperature (hot and short ame). Clinker quenching is of main importance so as to avoid any clinker oxidation ( coloured oxides). The coating is thin and specic care must be taken to avoid any ame impingement.
White cement structure

To complicate matters, each plant is different: secondary air temperature & windbox design, cooling technology, water injection which requires in each case a tailor made burner and, if necessary, a CFD study - for example to improve the secondary air distribution and velocity around the burner.

SITE RESULTS
Cruas plant is a 600 tpd white cement kiln in southern France. Calcia was faced with problems using their existing 3-channel burner when ring a mixture of petcoke, high viscosity oil and waste oil. The ame shape was to be improved with petcoke over 30% thermal load. Moreover, NOx emissions were high (over 1,100 mg/Nm3 @ 10 % O2), leading to a high urea consumption. The existing burner was operating with high primary air (17% of total combustion air), which was unfavourable for the specic heat consumption.

White cement burner

As a rst step, Fives Pillard made a CFD study thanks to Fluent software and modelled the kiln and secondary air inlet in order to analyse the pathow & combustion with the previous burner.

Kiln model 1/2

Once the weaknesses of the existing installation were identied (recirculation zone, uneven secondary air spread), various design parameters were tested with the numerical model (secondary air windbox velocity, burner swirl), in order to obtain a more concentric & radiating ame.
Radiating ux with the new burner

COLD

HOT

Flame temperature prole with the 3 channel burner

Flame temperature prole with the ROTAFLAM

Radiating ux with the previous burner

Flame temperature comparison

Weaknesses of the existing installation

The ROTAFLAM Version 2 (RV2) was commissioned in April 2008. After 1 year of operation, Calcia CRUAS is satised: Thanks to the concentric ame, a stable kiln operation is now possible even with pure petcoke ring. Even with a lower primary air ow (12% of combustion air), the ame is stronger, allowing easier clinker cooking and maintaining a high level of clinker whiteness without any ame impingement on the bricks. The NOx was reduced from 1,100 to 800 mg/Nm3 @10 %O2, almost without any further need of urea. The burner exibility allows smoother operation, especially during fuel switch-over. Consequently, the kiln availability is higher, and the process more stable.

CONCLUSION
The site results conrm that the help of CFD can be a decisive factor in choosing the best design parameters, particularly in the case of a special process. Thanks to the new burner & secondary air windbox, the direct benet for the CRUAS plant is higher fuel mastery (easier to re 100% petcoke), an easier and more stable kiln operation and a signicant reduction in the consumption of urea.

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