Handbook For Designing Cement Plants: Complete Guide & Downl

Handbook for Designing Cement Plants by S.P. Deolalkar is one of the most complete references ever published on the design of cement plants: 1,220 pages that take the reader by the hand from the very basics of the cement industry to the detailed engineering of every section of the plant, from the feasibility study and the market to the machinery enquiries, the layouts and the dispatch systems. The first edition (2008) covers all aspects of designing cement plants — mainly dry process plants with six-stage preheaters and calciners, vertical mills, electrostatic precipitators and the auxiliary machinery prevalent in the period — and the author’s books are counted among the top twenty books of the cement industry in the world.

This digital edition is part of the Complete Cement Technical Package of cementequipment.org (931 files: books, courses, Excel tools and presentations, $249.99 one-time, instant download after the PayPal payment). This guide walks the reader through the eight sections of the book with their verified contents, explains the design methodology of the volume, and positions it in the engineering library of the package.

1. The Book, the Author and the Design Mission

S.P. Deolalkar is the veteran Indian cement design engineer whose name is inseparable from the Indian cement expansion of the modern era: his handbook is the textbook of the design offices of the machinery makers, the consultants and the plant engineering departments of the region, and its international edition (the CRC Press/BS Publications edition of 2009) carried the same reputation to the world. The declared mission of the book, in its own words: the book explains the theoretical aspects of the various processes in making cement at the various stages, as also the steps in sizing the major machinery and the auxiliaries: all in all a very comprehensive and practical handbook, organized in eight sections that cover all aspects of designing cement plants from scratch, guiding step by step through the various stages involved in setting up a cement plant.

The design philosophy of the book is its own strength: the design of a cement plant is not a list of machines: it is a sequence of decisions that must be taken in the right order, with the right margins, at the right time of the project: the handbook formalizes that sequence in sections and chapters that the project engineer follows from the concept to the order of the equipment.

2. Section 1: The Basics — The Design Language

The opening section of the book installs the language and the numbers of the design: the ten chapters of the section cover the fundamental technical concepts: the types of cement — their properties and the uses (the OPC, the PPC, the slag cement, the special cements); the processes of manufacturing of cement; the selection of the process and the machinery; the raw materials, the additives and the fuels; the technical concepts of the process flowcharts, the conversion factors; the design margins to arrive at the capacities, the running hours in various sections, the sectional and the individual capacities, the process gases, the storages, the machinery schedules, the drawing specifications for inviting offers, and the properties of the materials that affect the sizing and the selection of the machinery.

This section is the “grammar” of the whole design: without the correct running hours and the design margins, the sections that follow (the sizing of every machine) have no base; the book gives here the numbers that the designers use: the hours of operation of the plant sections, the surge capacities, the storages in days, the gas quantities: the conventions that make the design coherent between the departments.

2.1 The Design Margins and the Running Hours: The Numbers Behind the Design

The most quoted pages of the basics section are the ones of the design margins and the running hours, because they are the silent convention of every design of the industry: the plant equipment is not sized on the average demand: it is sized with margins: the margins that absorb the variations of the market and the process: the handbook gives the conventional margins of the sections (the crushers, the mills, the kiln, the packing) and the running hours (typically in the range of a few thousand hours per year for the plant, with the utilization factors of the different sections), the basis of the annual capacity between the sections: the crusher independent of the mill, the silos as a buffer; the capacity of the kiln is the flagship of the plant, and the sections before and after are sized with the year of the kiln in the surge: the book makes the convention explicit: the reader understands then why the project of the industry requires the coordination of the sections by the margins and not by the equality: the geometry of a plant is the geometry of the balance between the surge and the flow.

3.2 The Sizing Examples and the Selection Tables of the Section

The machinery chapters of Section 2 carry the sizing arithmetic of the machines: the crusher selection by the hammers and the tonnages; the mill power by the Bond-type calculations and the volumes, the separator capacities by the fineness and the circulation; the preheater stages by the gas velocities and the pressure drops; the kiln diameter and the length by the output of the zone capacities; the cooler grate areas by the load per square metre; the filter cloth areas by the vent volumes and the dust burden: the book gives, in each chapter, the calculation sequence with the example figures, the table formats and the reasoning of the choice: for the designer the chapters are the working papers of the life: the same tables that the suppliers and the consultants still use to check the proposals of each other.

3.3 A Preview of the Feasibility Finances: The Tables the Book Gives

The financial chapters of the TEFS section deserve a second look: the capital costs of the project and the costs of the production are detailed in the chapters with their structures: the cost of the machinery, the civil, the erection, the commissioning, the land, the infrastructure: the components of the investment in the tables that the promoters of the region used for years; and the profitability and the investment analysis with the return calculations, the payback, the break-even: the chapters that transform the technical plan into the business case: the engineer who reads them understands the language of the financiers, and the financial man understands the logic of the technology: the bilingual currency of the cement projects between the engineering and the money.

3. Section 2: The Machinery Used in Making Cement — Nineteen Chapters from the Quarry to the Packing

The second section is the great machinery review of the book — nineteen chapters from the quarry to the packing:

Quarrying operations and the crushers: the types of crushers (single and double rotor, hammer, jaw, impact, the roll), their sizing, the selection by the material and the throughput, and the auxiliaries of the crushing section (the feeders, the screens, the dust, the de-dusting).
The stackers and the pre-homogenization: the stacker-reclaimer systems, the layers and the stratification, the achievable homogenization and the design of the stockpile: the section that guarantees the chemistry before the mill.
The grinding mills: the complete design block: the ball mills (the dimensions, the charge, the power, the formulas of the design), the vertical mills, and the roller presses: each with the sizing steps, the selection criteria and the auxiliaries.
The screens, the separators and the classifiers: the classification technology with the sizing of the equipment and the circuit know-how.
The blending systems: the batch and the continuous blending silos with the design of the homogenization, and the metering systems for the raw meal and the coal (the weighing feeders, the flow meters: the precision of the feed).
The preheaters, the calciners and the kilns: the design of the cyclone towers (the stages, the gas velocities), the precalciner vessels, the rotary kiln (the dimensioning).
The clinker coolers: the grate coolers and the planetary coolers, the clinker transporter (the drag chain, the pan), the cooling air fans.
Pollution control: the design of the filters and the de-dusting systems of the line (the airflow, the dust burdens, the selection): the environmental chapters of the era.
The cement dispatch chain: the cement mills, their storage, the packing machines, the despatches (bagging and bulk), the material handling systems: the conveyors, the elevators, the screws: the shipping of the completed cement.
The utilities: the fans (their laws and their selection), the compressors and the blowers, the motors, the gearboxes: the auxiliaries that the design must size and select.

This machinery section is the equipment encyclopedia of the designer: chapter after chapter, the machinery of the industry with the sizing and the selection: exactly the content that the design offices need.

4. Section 3: The Techno-Economic Feasibility Studies (TEFS)

The fourth section teaches the genesis of the project: the feasibility: the sixteen chapters that decide whether a plant will exist:

The investment decision: the logic of the decision, the risks and the criteria of the project.
The setting up of a cement plant — the techno-economic feasibility studies: the methodology and the content of the TEFS; a dedicated chapter defines precisely what the TEFS must contain: the complete checklist of the feasibility document.
The demand forecast and the market: the cement market of the region, the demand estimations and the product.
The limestone deposits: the exploration (the cores, the campaigns), the quantification of the reserves, the quality and its variability: the base of every cement project.
The environment: the EIA, the permits, the obligations of the era, the emissions and the waste, the community.
Infrastructural facilities: the land, the power, the water, the rail and the road, the port: the site services of the plant.
The manpower requirements, the implementation schedule of the project, the erection and the commissioning: the execution chapters of the plant: the planning of the start.
The capital costs of the project, the costs of production, the profitability and the investment analysis: the costs of the whole project and the financial return: the conclusions of feasibility: the executive summary and the recommendation, and the chapter of the factors governing the size of the cement plant.

This section is the economics course of the cement industry: the investor, the banker and the promoter read here the logic of the investment, and the designers receive the context of their designs: the feasibility that precedes the drawing board.

5. Section 4: The Civil Design and Construction

The civil section of the book covers the world of the concrete of the plant: the civil design and the civil engineering of the plant; the non-factory buildings (the administration, the canteens) and the design aspects of some of the non-factory buildings; the colony, the guest houses and the clubs; the storages of the plant: the silos, the bins, the hoppers: the design of the storage and the discharge (the hopper angles, the flow); and the water supply of the plant: the water balance of the industry, the treatment, the cooling water: the civil support of the machines: the foundations under the plant, built by the synergies of the mechanical and the civil drawing offices.

6. Section 5: The Electricals and the Instrumentation

The electrical and the instrumentation section carries the design of the electrical heart of the plant: the electrical systems in general (the voltage levels, the substations); the power distribution and the cables (the sizing of the cables, the protection, the distribution through the plant); the power consumption and its calculation (the demand, the load, the specific consumption: the chapters that feed the operating costs); the instrumentation and the process control (the measurement points, the control loops, the DCS); the lighting and the communications; the quality control and the laboratory (the equipment of the quality: from the X-ray to the physical tests); and the chapter of the computer in the cement industry of the era: the automation that the industry was adopting.

These chapters complete the design: the plant is not only the steel and the concrete: it is the connectivity of the power and the signals; the handbook dedicates the full section to the electrical design of the plant, with the calculation methods of the consumption.

7. Section 6: The Layouts and the Detailed Engineering — The Core of the Book

The sixth section is the heart of the volume: the layouts of the whole plant, in the detail that makes the handbook famous: the section runs over a thousand figures and designs: the general layouts of the cement plants; the departmental layouts; the layouts of the crushing plants and their auxiliaries; the storage of the crushed limestone and the stacker-reclaimer systems; the raw mills and the separators, the maintenance of the mills; the layouts of the coal mills; the conveying of the raw meal, of the coal, of the cement: the pneumatic conveyor pipelines; the batch blending and storage systems of the raw meal, the continuous blending systems; the kiln feed systems; the pyroprocessing section: the preheaters (Lepol grate, cyclone), the preheater fans, the calciners; the tertiary air duct, the dust chamber and the connecting ducts; the rotary kiln (the complete design chapter); the coal and the oil firing with the metering systems; the clinker coolers: the planetary, the grate, the collecting systems, the cooling air fans, the cooler vent and the de-dusting; the clinker conveying and storage; the handling of the coal, the gypsum, the slag and the fly ash (the plants of slag cement and pozzolana portland cement); the cement mills, the cement storage and the packing plant with its layouts and the dispatches: the simultaneous loading of the trucks and the wagons, the bulk loading by the road and the rail, the bulk loading of the clinker, the exporting of the cement, the import of the coal, the railway siding.

The layout chapters of the section give the drawings and the arrangements of each part of the plant: the detailed engineering that the design offices reproduce in every project: the book is accordingly consulted as the “drawing book” of the profession: no other title in the market displays the plant in such engineering detail.

7.1 The Detailed Engineering Beyond the Layouts: The Drawing Chapters

The section of the layouts also carries the detailed engineering chapters that follow the drawings of the plant: the venting of the equipment (the vent volumes and the de-dusting of each vessel), the chutes, the ducts and the chimneys (the sizing of the gas ducts of the plant and the chimneys), the pipelines and the supports, the pipelines of the compressed air and the pneumatic conveying, the oil lubrication and the cooling water systems, the bed plates, the foundations and the load data (the loads that each machine gives to the civil design), the civil drawings and the design of the departmental buildings, the working platforms and the conveyor gantries, the lifts, the hoists and the lifting tackles of the plant, and the chapter of the safety of the design (the safety distances, the guards, the fire protection, the access): the completely detailed engineering that closes the gap between the layout and the execution drawings of the projects; the sampling of the plant, the refractories (the lining selection), the insulation and the lagging, the fan, the compressor and the blower auxiliaries, the good housekeeping and the co-generation: the engineering support of the plant that the design offices incorporate in their documents.

8. Section 7: Selecting and Ordering the Machinery — The Procurement Close of the Design Loop

The machinery procurement block is the unique section of the book that closes the design loop: the ordering of the machinery: the formulating of the enquiries (the ENQs), the technical data sheets (the TDS): the documents of the request for the offers; the evaluation of the offers: the comparison of the suppliers; the critical operational and design parameters — the checklist of the parameters that every machine must match; and the time factor: the delivery and the schedule of the equipment: the section of the buyers and the project managers: the discipline that prevents the mismatch between what was designed and what was ordered, the daily failure that the plants pay for years. The chapters of the section give the technical schedule of the machinery schedules: the designer develops the enquiry documents, the supplier responds, and the evaluation comparison ensures the machine delivers the design numbers: with the Technical Data Sheets format of the section, the buyers of the industry standardized their procurement documentation literally from the forms of this book.

9. Section 8: The Reference Section (Sources)

The last section of the book contains the sources and the reference material of the designer: the reference books and the reference manuals; the sources of the plates and the layouts; and the powerful working tools of the CD of the edition: the reference sheets: the crushers, the screens, the grinding media, the ball mills, the vertical mills, the separators, the fan laws, the preheaters, the kilns, the burners, the coolers, the pneumatic conveyors, the mechanical conveyors, the vent volumes and the dust burdens, the log-log and the semi-log sheets, the motors, the gearboxes: the ready instruments of the calculations of the design: the appendix of the handbook is a small engineering library in itself.

10. Who Uses the Handbook

User	Use of the handbook
Cement plant consultants	The complete reference of the design and the feasibility work
Cement technologists	Process concepts and the sizing steps
Cement machinery manufacturers	The specification of the machinery and the layouts
Entrepreneurs and project promoters	The feasibility studies, the capital costs, the plant size
Plant engineers of the operating plants	The design margin against the operational data
Design and drawing offices	The layouts, the detailed engineering, the drawings
Students of the cement industry	The complete formation of the industry in one book

The book states its own audience in its front matter: “it will be of great use to cement plant consultants, cement technologists, and cement machinery manufacturers and most certainly to entrepreneurs and cement plant personnel, staff of design and drawing offices who have the responsibility to develop layouts will find in it a very handy guide”: the audience of the whole industry.

11. The Handbook in the Complete Cement Technical Package

In the library the handbook occupies the design corner: the position of the project book of the package: the volume that answers the questions of the future of the plant, while the operation titles answer the questions of the present: the pair of the professional who works on both horizons, the desk of the corporate planning and the field of the current shifts.

With Duda’s Cement Data Book: the German classic gives the equipment data and the world surveys; the Deolalkar gives the design steps and the layouts: the data and the method.
With the Holderbank and the FLS courses: the courses give the operation and the process of the running plant; the handbook gives the design of the same plant before it exists: the formation of the two phases of the industry.
With the chemistry of Lea and Taylor: the science of the material; the Deolalkar applies it in the sizing of the process: the two supports of the technical design.
With the Excel tools: the calculators of the package (the heat balance, the systems, the mill power) execute the same balances that the handbook sizes: the design book and the calculation tool set.

The professional who owns the package reads the industry at both phases: the design of the future plant (this handbook) and the operation of the existing one: the complete spectrum of the discipline.

12. The Digital Edition in the Package

The digital edition of the package is the complete 1,220-page book, in its original pagination with the eight sections and the system of the section:page numbering (I:5, II:12 … as the book itself instructs the reader to navigate the page number box), the full contents list with the old chapters, and the searchability of the PDF: the engineer writes “kiln” or “TDS” or “fans” and the design opens in a second. The edition is the same as the printed CRC Press/BSLA edition of 2009, and the page quality of the scans preserves the layouts and the plates of the drawings.

13. Frequently Asked Questions

Is the book current: the industry changed since 2008?

The handbook describes the modern dry plant of its era: the six-stage preheater, the calciner, the vertical mill, the ESP: the same equipment family of today’s lines. The design logic, the margins, the feasibility and the layouts remain the daily practice; the modern additions (the digital, the more efficient separators) are added by the other books and the tools of the package on the same basis: the handbook gives the foundation, the package updates the practice, and the reader compares the margins of the book with the numbers of his own line with profit.

Can the book be used for the design of a small plant, a line conversion or an expansion?

Yes: the methodology of the book is scale-invariant: the feasibility, the machinery selection, the layouts and the procurement are the same steps for a new line of five thousand tons a day and for the conversion of an existing plant: the expansion projects of the industry (the added kiln, the new mill, the new packing) are designed with the same chapters, and the operating plants use the margins of the book to size their future steps.

I am not building a plant; is the book still useful?

Yes: the operating plants use the book to evaluate their own equipment against the design data (the running hours, the design margins, the sizing), to plan the expansions and the conversions, and to understand the content of the TEFS and the technical commitments of the suppliers: the book supports the communication of the in-house engineers with the consultants and the vendors of the industry.

Does the book include drawings and plates?

Yes: the layouts and the drawings of the plants and the departments are a major part of the volume (the section of the loading includes dozens of the layout pages), and the reference section cites the sources of the plates: the edition images the drawings of the original.

How does the package deliver the book?

With the complete package: 931 files — the books, the courses, the Excel tools and the presentations — for one-time $249.99 via PayPal: the instant download link is e-mailed, and the library (this handbook, the Duda, the Lea, the Taylor, the Holderbank, the FLS, the tools) remains yours for life.

14. Conclusion

The Handbook for Designing Cement Plants by S.P. Deolalkar is the design bible of the Indian and the international cement industry: the eight sections take the professional from the basics to the feasibility, the machinery, the civil, the electrical, the layouts, the procurement and the references: the complete project view of the cement plant, the book that the consultants, the promoters, the technologists and the design offices keep permanently on their desks: the one that the top twenty of the cement literature of the world printed: the design of the plant, in the book of the design. In the Complete Cement Technical Package it completes the engineering of the package with the design view, next to the operation of the Holderbank, the data of Duda and the chemistry of the classics: the complete library: $249.99, one-time, instant download, lifetime access: the project, the plant and the profession: all at hand.

The handbook for designing cement plants is the classic engineering reference that covers the complete design sequence of the cement factory: the plant capacity calculations, the equipment selection and sizing, the process flowsheets, the layout, the commissioning and the operating data that the design engineers use from the concept to the start-up of the new plant.

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