Dedusting Kiln and Raw Mill for Asia Cement

The challenge of the project

ASIA CEMENT, part of Heidelberg Group and one of the most important cement producers in ASEAN countries, selected us as the supplier for the process dedusting equipment of its 6,000 tpd kiln line 1 located in Pukrang, Thailand.

The supply consists of the new bag filter for kiln and raw mill exhaust gas dedusting at a rated capacity of 1.090,000 Am³/h including the dismantling of the old electrostatic precipitator, the installation of the new filtration unit, connection of inlet and outlet ductworks, new fan and motor, compressed air supply system, commissioning and startup of the upgraded plant.

The challenge of this project was to allocate the new filter unit on the same the support structure and hoppers of the existing ESP minimizing the installation cost.

The limit coming from the tight space available of the existing footprint was easily overcome thanks to the installation of 29 bags of 10m length in the same row so reducing the number of air tanks saving space to match the required amount of filtering area.

The trend of SWAP technology in cleaning

Each pulse valve installed in the filter is now capable to clean 139 m² of filtration area by means of one single shot of compressed air at low pressure lasting just few milliseconds, marking a new milestone in our history. The graph shows the trend of SWAP technology in cleaning a continuously increased filtration area in CTP Bag Filters during the past 40 years. In this picture, each point represents a multiple number of plants installed by us with bags from 3 up to 12m long. While the bag length is progressively increased up to 4 times, much more impressive is the cleaned area per single shot which, thanks to the SWAP system efficiency, is increased more than 8 times.

SWAP technology high performance and reliability

This record for SWAP technology is even more remarkable when we have a look to the parameters registered during the performance test. Working at full filter capacity, the compressed air consumption for bags cleaning is stabilized at 4 Nlitres/h/m² which is extremely low and means the SWAP system is capable to clean one row of 29 bags 10m long with just 0.56 Nm³/h of compressed air at 2.3 bar pressure. In comparison with the old technology cleaning a few number of short bags at high pressure, the consumption is reduced more than 20 times.

This result must be read in combination with the filter pressure drop stable at 8 mbar and the filtration efficiency of 1.5 mg/Nm³ of dust emission at the stack.
Working parameters well above any expectations, confirming once again the high performance and reliability of SWAP technology which needs minimum energy consumption to operate with maximum performance.

Remote commissioning project

Same positive results we obtained in high dust load applications like cement grinding, separators and coal mill dedusting plants where SWAP system confirms its top efficiency even when it is necessary to remove hundreds of tons per hour of dust from long filtering bags.

The project started in 2019, so all long our project execution and Asia Cement had to deal with Covid-19 issues and measures, despite of this and the heavy rainy season during the installation period, we and our subcontractors, reached the contractual target plant shutdown period.
Commissioning and start-up procedures and management was also re-organized to overcome the pandemic restrictions. Expert teams from the plant with our team, carried out remotely the commissioning activities across thousands of kilometers and many time zones. This critical experience taught that remote commissioning is a real option to be carried out in the future whether our ability to travel is limited by the Covid-19 pandemic or other unforeseen factors.