Cement production involves the heating, calcining and sintering of blended and ground raw materials, typically limestone and clay or shale and other materials to form clinker. This clinker burning takes place at a material temperature of 1450 °C in kilns, which are inclined rotating cylinders lined with heat resistant bricks. Afterwards, the clinker is ground with a small amount of gypsum to give Portland
cement, which is the most common variety of cement manufactured in Europe. In addition, blended cements are produced by inter grinding cement clinker, small amounts of gypsum as well as materials like fly ash, granulated blast furnace slag, limestone, natural or artificial pozzolanas. Large cement plants produce of the order of 4,000 tonnes of cement per day.
Depending on how the raw material is handled before being fed to the kiln, basically three different types of processes can be distinguished: the dry, semi-dry/semi-wet and wet process. The technology
applied depends on the origin of the raw materials. The origin/type of limestone/clay and the water content (ranging from 3% for hard limestone to above 20% for chalk), are particularly important.
In the dry process the feed material enters the kiln in a dry, powdered form. The kiln systems comprise a tower of heat exchange cyclones in which the dry feed is preheated (“preheater kiln”) by the rotary kiln’s hot exit gases prior to entering the actual kiln. The calcination process can almost be completed before the raw material enters the kiln if part of the fuel is added in a special combustion chamber
(“precalciner kiln”).
In the wet process, which is often used for raw materials with a high moisture content, the feed material is made by wet grinding and the resulting slurry, which contains typically 30-40% water, is fed directly into the upper end of the inclined kiln.