Snowmen disappear in Florida – more uptime and efficiency appear

The objective

Titan Florida had recently finished the installation of a new production line supplied by FLSmidth and wanted FLSmidth’s help to deal with a number of challenges, including severe snowman formation caused by chemistry fluctuations. Every eight hours their kiln was creating a snowman – and while their pit crew could hydroblast it out of the cooler inlet in less than 30 minutes, a more efficient solution was required. The snowmen were also affecting the wear life of the original cooler inlet and costing the plant major annual repairs.

Defining the project

An overall engineering and financial study laid the groundwork for the upgrade project. It then led to an incremental, multi-year plan developed in close collaboration with Titan Florida to continuously improve the plant’s uptime, operation, reliability and efficiency.

Working with Titan Florida, FLSmidth’s CSP group eased the transition from the close of the major project by creating new ties with plant staff and helping them gauge priorities. Addressing the snowman problem was at the top of the list. 

The solution

The solution featured the first ABC cooler inlet on the U.S. market – installed to improve the original Controlled Impact Section and set the model for future retrofits.

In addition to the ABC Cooler Inlet, FLSmidth also supplied three new cooler fans, a new heat exchanger to protect the cooler vent fan from temperature spikes, and modifications to the kiln dust handling system.

Challenges

The upgrade required modifications to the plant that could only be performed during a shutdown. Because of the high demand for cement at the time, the downtime had to be minimised. FLSmidth and Titan worked closely together to ensure solutions and designs that would allow for quick installation and short downtime.