LOESCHE Round-Table Concluded on a High Note

LOESCHE's first Round-Table India which was conducted by the Indian subsidiary Loesche India Pvt. Ltd. in cooperation with Loesche GmbH in Germany was concluded recently.

Mr. P.C. Abraham, from Loesche India Pvt. Ltd. gave an insight in the organisation of the technical field service in India.

After receiving warm welcome from Dr. Thomas Loesche, around 100 participants were lead through an interesting program, covering different aspects of the cement production. Companies such as Holtec, Vicat, Holcim and MCL participated in this program through their presentations about the practical experiences within their cement plants.

Loesche informed the interested audience about the high end cement quality products in Loesche's vertical roller mills with the possible achievement of 8000 Blaine Slag, 6000 Blaine Cement OPC.

The first presentation was given by Holtec Consulting Pvt. Ltd., with an outlook of the cement industry in India and in the neighbouring countries Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Buhtan and Sri Lanka in the next 10 years.

From A-Tec in Austria, the preheater upgrade and calciner optimisation in combination with petcoke at Cementicillo Fanna Italy was described and allowed some deeper understanding of the impact of mere upgrading and optimisation of existing equipment.

The new Loesche concept of a split grinding unit realized at the ACL's Dadri cement plant was narrated as to the focus and the industrial reality of cement grinding without hot gases in such units. A plant visit to see the LOESCHE Mill Type LM 56.3+3 running without hot gases at the Dadri plant was organized for the participants who numerously took advantage of this field trip.

The client Bharathi Cements took the opportunity to present their experiences and results achieved by plant optimisation. At their cement plant Nallalingayapalli, Line 1 was commissioned in 2009 with a LOESCHE vertical roller mill Type LM 54.6 for raw mix grinding, a LM 26.3 D for coal grinding and the world's largest mill a LM 63.3+3 for clinker grinding. Line 2 was commissioned in 2011 with a LOESCHE vertical roller mill Type LM 54.6 for raw mix grinding, a LM 26.3 D for coal grinding and two LM 53.3+3 for clinker grinding.

For both mill types, the raw material and clinker mills optimisation has further optimized the mill output and at the same time reduced the specific power consumption.

LOESCHE's approach to minimize total investment cost by building compact grinding plants was presented. The decisive factors for project feasibility as well as the typical features of Loesche Compact Design were described. As Loesche always aims to supply solutions considering the environmental aspects, one of the main advantages of the compact design, certainly is the reduction of footprint by 42%.

The Loesche client Madras Cement Ltd. informed about their operating experience of Loesche Mills at Alathiyur. The plant was upgraded with the new Loesche classifier equipped with vortex rectifier for both raw mills Type LM 38.3 of Line 1 and Line 2.

MCL Alathiyur has two Coal mills of LM 20.2D size, operating in Line 1 and 2. The coal mills were designed for lignite grinding with central feed. MCL started using imported Pet coke & coal which made a replacement of the existing classifier necessary.

The performance of upgraded raw mill and coal mill met the expectation of MCL. With significant saving in specific power of grinding sections, MCL achieved specific power consumption of 63-64 kWh/t in PPC for complete plant, which is the benchmark in the industry. The series of national awards for the highest energy efficient plant bears a testimony of innovative commitment by MCL.

Another presentation from Austria was the one from Greko with a stunning example of burner optimisation for the use of petcoke.

The General Sales Manager from Loesche Mills Shanghai, China, offered an insight into the Loesche workshop in China with the possibility to produce Loesche equipment. Top Loesche quality designed in Germany can be guaranteed - manufactured in China. The Indian audience appreciated this as an interesting opportunity to be considered in the future.

Looking ahead and into future projects is the idea of how to build low cost high efficiency filters with a length of 6 to 10 meters presented by Intensiv Filter India. Recent industrial trends were highlighted as to possible applications of such filters, for example in the Loesche's split grinding units.

Loesche presented the world's first containerised coal grinding plant CGPmobile (CGP = Coal Grinding Plant), which reduces energy costs for thermal processes by up to 60%.

The new CGP mobile plant grinds coal into coal dust, which can then be used to power thermal plants much more efficiently than gas or oil. The coal dust can be burnt and used in asphalt mixing plants, in the cement industry, for drying processes and for decentralised power generation, in order to generate process heat or steam.

Coal dust reduces energy costs drastically, particularly in countries where there is a big difference in price between coal on one hand and gas or oil on the other. Here, these plants pay for themselves in less than two years.

Loesche builds large-scale mills with throughputs of up to 500 t/h for the cement industry. However, many smaller sites in growth regions currently work with a capacity of 200– 300,000 tonnes of cement each year, and will be able to significantly decrease their energy costs with the CGPmobile plants.

LOESCHE's new product launched at the beginning of 2012, the Loesche LMmaster was described and the first operational experiences with a substantial saving at a cement plant in Turkey were given.

Loesche implemented a turnkey solution without any further operational expenditures and a ROI of below 1 year. This is allowed by a short implementation time of 2–3 months without any shutdowns and interruptions of the grinding system. LMmaster delivers significant sustainable improvements to the Loesche Mill.


The information awaited the most by the Indian clients was the presentation of the technical field services from Loesche India, implemented and established with great effort to serve the Indian clients directly and at their utmost convenience.

With respect to this and to all other papers, there was a lively and extensive discussion with time for questions and answers. Throughout the two days of meeting, all participants enjoyed the opportunity of exchanging ideas and experiences on an international basis.

At the conclusion of two days full of information, interesting discussion and lively exchange of ideas, all, audience and Loesche, agreed that this Round Table India should be repeated soon. The next event of its kind is announced to take place in the 4th quarter of 2013.