Nevyantskiy Cement Works (Russia) is the oldest cement plant in the Urals that has been in operation since 1914. Today, Nevyantskiy Cement works is the industry leader having a unique furnace equipped with a calciner and a cyclone heat exchanger, the only one of this type in Russia. The cement manufactured at Nevyantskiy Cement works is offered to the custiomers through the Urals branch of the Eurocement sales company.
Nevyantskiy Cement Works employs dry cement manufacturing technology featuring:
- the rotary furnace with 125 tons per hour output;
- two raw matertial mills enabling parallel raw material drying with 130 tons per hour output each;
- clinker grate refridgerator;
- two cement mills with a 90 tons per hour each.
The factory delivers products for Bashkortostan, Tatarstan,  Udmurtia, Chuvashia; Kemerovo, Kirov, Kurgan, Nizhniy Novgorod, Perm, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk regions; Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenetsk autonomous districts; Krasnodar and Mari-El Republics.
The Nevyantskiy Cement Works is the third largest cement manufacturer in the Urals region, and the 18th in Russia. The plant managers believe that such output efficiency is only possible due to consistent deployment of the process control systems.
In 1999, Nevyantskiy Cement Works has implemented their first SCADA HMI TRACE MODE based control system. The TRACE MODE SCADA HMI has been used at the main process facilities, such as the rotary furnace and refridgerator. For hardware, the engineers have used the LOMICONT 110 controllers. "Actually, chosing a SCADA HMI system required almost no decision-making. The TRACE MODE has been the only Russian SCADA software we knew," says Egorov N.Y., Deputy Supervisor of Control System shop at Nevyantskiy Cement Works. "Our choice proved to be the right one."
For deploying two TRACE MODE SCADA-based systems, the managers turned to a third party solution.
As mentioned above, Nevyantskiy Cement works employs a new process line for producing "dry" cement. This technology forces periodical changes of the controlled parameters, which consequently requires control programs update. Seeing the benefits of having a certified SCADA HMI TRACE MODE specialist who could change or add necessary parameters more quickly, the managers sent one of employers to the AdAstrA Research Group,Ltd Authorized training centre .
 From now on, the certified specialist with needful industry competence took over development of the SCADA HMI TRACE MODE based control and information systems at the works, readily responding to the engineers' requests.
Today, TRACE MODE technology at Nevyantskiy Cement works enables full automation of the clinker burning line including the "Furnace" and refridgerators control systems. The employees using the newly-introduced information and control system have reported the following advantages:
- the process parameter monitoring has been made easier;
- process breakdown or emergency generates both visual and sound information for an operator;
- process information is now more detailed, thus decreasing the number of emergency cyclone overfill and stabilizing cement cet;
- decision-making time has decreased.
The Technical Director of the works believes that TRACE MODE based control system enabled Nevyantskiy Cement Works increase their rotary furnace output from 115 to 125 tons per hour, which amounts to 8.7%.
Ultimately, this generates extra 5 tons of clinker per hour. In terms of money this results in the following profit:
Clinker is sold at 450 roubles and has a cash cost of 310 roubles. 1 ton means 140 roubles.
Annual revenue after deploying TRACE MODE SCADA control system solution:
- Invested: 1,234,263 roubles (about $400 000).
- The first year return of investment (ROI) 2,584,750 roubles (about $850 000)
- The extra revenue is 6,132,000 roubles (about 2 000 000$).
Each rouble invested in TRACE MODE SCADA HMI system has returned 6 roubles of net profit (606.23%). The project return of investment (ROI) period is 1.7 months.
The return of investment (ROI) calculcation includes purchasing of low-level controllers. Without these costs, i.e. when using the existing controllers, one can achieve a significantly better return of investment (ROI).
The return of investment (ROI) was calculated on the basis of January, 2004 prices. Obviously, the SCADA HMI implementation is beneficial.
An Eurocement press release states the production output rise in 2004 by 28% in comparison with 2003, producing 219 thousands of tons of cement.
"Our positive on-hand experience of the TRACE MODE SCADA HMI software implementation makes us presume that future we will be closely working with AdAstrA Research Group,Ltd. on their user-friendly and reliable software," concluded Egorov N.Y., Deputy Supervisor of Control System shop at Nevyantskiy Cement works. |
