Success Stories
CASE STUDY V: KCM-2. DIRECT STACKING PLANT WITH... FROZEN COAL

Corporate
CONCLUSIONS FROM BATIMATEC 2017

News and Accomplishments
START-UP OF A BENCHMARK FACTORY IN NORTH AFRICA

Origin of the project
In 2011, one of the main builders in Krasnoyarsk (Siberia) contacted BERALMAR’s representatives in Russia. As a builder, and due to its geographical location, its supply of building materials, particularly bricks, was a critical issue. So, considering its own annual consumption of solid bricks, manufacturing them itself was raised, anticipating that the majority of the proposed production (300 tonnes/day) would be for its own use. Their main worry was manufacturing costs and, with energy understood to be the main cost, they proposed the only fuel to be used in the plant to be local coal.

A peculiar fuel
The client had knocked on the right door, because BERALMAR is the sector leader in solid fuel technologies. The problem with local coal is that in Siberia, due to the permafrost (permanent ice in the subsoil), the coal comes out of the mine mixed with ice and it even remains in this state during distribution over a large part of the year. So the coal had to reach the future ceramics plant frozen or not, but in any case with a lot of moisture, of over 40%. To be able to use this coal it was necessary to install a special dryer, from where an interesting closed circuit for handling this fuel began: the wet coal passes through a rotary drum dryer that lowers its moisture level from approximately 40% to less than 10%. At the outlet from the coal dryer, a small portion of the coal is sent to a model CSD combustion chamber, which burns the coal to generate the heat the rotary drum dryer needs for its coal drying process. Meanwhile, the majority of the coal goes to the kiln combustion system, a PROMATIC model, which in turn includes a drying system (from <10% to <2% moisture) for the coal during the milling process.

Avoiding the use of auxiliary fuels
The kiln is therefore equipped with a PROMATIC system and is designed to carry out the firing process without the aid of any additional preheating fuel by extending the preheating zone and providing the kiln ventilation system with extra capacity to transfer the heat from the firing zone to the preheating zone at higher pressure.

On the other hand, a direct kiln car stacking dryer was selected for the brick drying process, with a single tunnel, LEVANTE model. This type of dryer is the most efficient (in spite of its other known advantages) and, combined with hard extrusion with a maximum of 16% moisture in the clay, the proposed dryer was capable of functioning exclusively with the hot air recovered from the kiln, despite the extreme winter temperatures.

This is how the KCM-2 ceramics plant in Krasnoyarsk was conceived and built, with outstanding operating data:

Production: 300 tonnes/day of solid Russian bricks (3.7 kg).
Total production workers: 24.
Total thermal consumption: 330 kcal/kg in firing and drying.
Fuel: 100% coal at 5,000 kcal/kg.

Location of Krasnoyarsk In Siberia.

Coal combustion chamber.

Rotary drum dryer for the coal (from <40% to <10% moisture).

Cutting line.

Robotised direct kiln car stacking.

Car with fired material.

Packing line.

Conclusions
The Krasnoyarsk KCM-2 ceramics plant started operating in autumn of 2015 and was a success. Production was of the expected quality from the beginning, with exclusive use of very low-priced local coal, as the client desired.

This case combined BERALMAR’s remarkable experience in both direct stacking dryers and solid fuel solutions, which were key when defining a project customised to the client’s requirements. At the same time, the challenge of the fuel conditions in Siberia was a good learning experience for Beralmar in defining an appropriate solution for drying and for handling a solid fuel with this volume of moisture.

In summary, an exceptional plant and a success story.

Watch video (3 min)

The next case study will be published in Newsletter no. 116 in June 2017.

BERALMAR participated, as it does every year, in the BATIMATEC Fair, the most important construction show in Algeria.

The situation the sector is going through due to current problems of access to financing is well known. This was made clear at the fair, with lower visitor attendance and some habitual exhibitors missing. In spite of this context, BERALMAR committed to a good presence and at the same time found a willingness on the part of various ceramics companies to go ahead with their projects in spite of the difficulties, convinced of the viability of their approaches.

These ceramics companies know they will find in BERALMAR a flexible ally that understands the market and the context to study how to execute their projects.

In any case, we will see each other again at BATIMATEC in 2018!

BERALMAR has commenced the start-up of a new benchmark factory in North Africa.

This is the new AMINA BRIQUES plant in Tetouan (Morocco), a remarkable factory both in terms of scale and performance.

To start with, in terms of size, AMINA BRIQUES is one of the biggest ceramics plants in Africa: a tunnel kiln 183 metres long and almost 7 metres wide internally, 2 direct car stacking drying tunnels of the same dimensions as the kiln, for minimum production of 800 tonnes/day.

As regards performance, in spite of the aforementioned production capacity, its low thermal consumption (323 kcal/kg in drying and firing) and the use of low cost fuels (petcoke and olive pomace) for both firing and drying, with minimal use of fuel-oil in the kiln preheating zone, are noteworthy.

But, above all, AMINA BRIQUES is a multi-product factory conceived with a view to the future, because as well as a wide range of hollow bricks, it is ready to manufacture honeycomb clay and large format blocks, products that will undoubtedly steadily find their place in the Moroccan market.

We will continue to report on this start-up soon.