Fls Mechanical Maintainance Of Kiln: Complete Guide & Downlo

Mechanical Maintenance of Kiln Systems is the maintenance training manual of F.L. Smidth (FLS) Global Services — the service arm of the leading kiln supplier of the world — 197 pages that carry the engineer through the whole mechanical life of the kiln line: from the design considerations behind the shell and the supports, through the complete set of emergency and stop procedures of the plant, to the systematic inspection of the kiln system that keeps the line alive for decades. It is the companion of the mechanical team: the document that the maintenance planning, the shift engineers and the shutdown teams of the plants of the industry grew up with.

This manual 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 explains what the manual contains, chapter by chapter as the table of contents presents it, and how it works with the FLS process reference (the Burner Bible) and the rest of the library.

1. The Document and the FLS Global Services Training Program

Every page of the manual carries the corporate line “Global Services — Training — © F.L. Smidth A/S”: the document comes from the training system that the Danish supplier built for the mechanical and process formation of its customers’ engineers: a curriculum city of the 197 pages, designed to be followed by rotation: the mechanical maintenance of the numbering: the kiln the supplier knows better than anyone, because it built thousands of them. This is its first distinctive: it is not the maintenance book of a theory; it is the maintenance book of the builder.

The document is organized in three large blocks, listed in its own table of contents: 1. Design Considerations (the mechanics and the shell safety), 2. (the emergency and stop procedures of the line), and 3. Inspection of the Kiln System (the systematic survey). Following the manual in this order gives the complete cycle: the understanding of the machine, the actions of the critical moments, and the discipline of the routine look.

2. Chapter 1: Design Considerations — Understanding the Machine Before Maintaining It

The first chapter opens the maintenance of the kiln where it must: in the design of the machine, because the maintenance of the kiln is a game whose rules were fixed on the drawing board. The chapter develops, in the order of its own contents:

• 1.1 The main components: the anatomy of the rotary kiln line: the shell, the tyres (live rings), the supporting rollers with their bearings, the thrust rollers, the girth gear and the pinion, the drive (with the gear, the coupling, the auxiliary drive), the inlet and the outlet seals, the burner pipe carriers of the nose: the map of everything that will be maintained for the rest of the manual.
• 1.2 The mechanics of the kiln system: the statics and the dynamics of the rotating shell: the dead load of the refractory and the coating, the bending moments between the supports, the ovality of the shell, the expansion with the heat, the deflection along the axis: the mechanical behavior that decides each inspection point: the roller loads and the shell stress.
• 1.3 The kiln shell — the global situation: the whole chapter analyzes the state of the shell as a structure: the cross-section geometry influence: the out-of-roundness of the shell, the ovality measurement, the relation of the ovality to the refractory fall and the shell fatigue; the fatigue loading: the cyclic stress of the kiln as it rotates: every revolution is a load cycle on the shell: the fatigue life of the steel, the crack initiation and the growth, the calculated inspection intervals (the hours of rotation); the weldings: the welding of the shell (the longitudinal and the circumferential seams), the weld quality on the delivery, the weld inspection (NDT: ultrasonic, magnetic particle, dye penetrant), the repair procedures and the after-repair controls: the pages that a shell-side engineer reads before any outage.
• 1.4 Tyres (live rings) and supporting rollers: the tire as the ring of the shell transmitting the support reaction, the shrink-fit connection (the interference, the mounting temperatures), the tire wear (the polygonal wear of the tire), the roller adjustment, the contact geometry and the axial control.
• 1.5 The supporting rollers and the ‘kiln crank’: the alignment of the supports: the concept of the “kiln crank” — the parallel displacement of the kiln axis between the supports — its computation from the roller positions, its effect on the shell stresses and the coupling; the alignment campaign with the measuring instruments, the adjustment of the bearings and the limits; the page of the “life of the supports”.
• 1.6 Conclusion: the closing of the chapter: the summary of the design-driven maintenance doctrine: the machine is a structure that suffers, and the inspection and the alignment are the instruments of its life.

This first chapter is a complete mechanical engineering education of the kiln in pages that the user has permanently at the drawings: no plant engineer of the kilns works without this base.

3. Chapter 2: The Emergency and Stop Procedures of the Line

The second chapter of the manual walks the operator through the critical situations of the run: the procedures of the stops, the trips and the emergencies: a full catalog from the beginning of the line to the end:

• The stops of the units: the procedure of the correct stop of the whole line: the sequence: the raw mill, the coal mill, the preheater fans, the kiln drive cooldown rotation, the cooler; and the emergency stops of the units (the individual trips: the mill motor, the fan, the ESP) with the restoration actions in the right order; the manual gives the step-by-step list for each: the man at the panel follows the pages in seconds.
• 2.17 Clinker transport stop: the failure or the trip of the clinker transport (the pan conveyor): the actions: the effect on the cooler (the risk of the back-pile and the gates), the reduction of the kiln rate, the handling of the cooling and the recovery: a documented example of the industrial procedure of the chapter.
• 2.18 The hammer crusher stop: the trip of the crusher of the cooler: the action on the cooler grate speed, on the air and on the kiln: the management of the clinker to avoid the overflow and the restart sequence.
• 2.19 The electrostatic precipitator tension stop: the ESP failure (T/R set failure, the sparking, the insulator): the immediate effect on the emissions and on the fan; the procedure: the normal operation on the reduced field, the repair window and the restart of the field: the environmental risk page of the line.
• 2.20 The kiln coal stop and 2.21 the calciner coal stop: the loss of the coal feeding to the main burner or to the calciner: the temperature crash, the risk of the flooding and the safe fuel transition: the procedures with the time sequence: how long the line can run, what the operator must do in the first minutes, and how the fuel is restored: the most practiced pages of the chapter, because every coal-plant operator has faced one of the two dozens of times.
• 2.22 The change between coal and oil during running: the live switching of the fuel without stopping the kiln: the conditions, the sequence of the burner reconfiguration, the flame observation, the combustion control and the alternative of the change back: the procedure of the plants that run both coal and oil.
• 2.23 The missing grate plate: the detection of a missing grate plate in the cooler (the visible short circuit of the air, the hot spots), the immediate measures, the repair window and the effect of the air distribution: the chapter closes the series of the unexpected of the cooler.

The chapter is the “emergency book” of the plant: each stop is a scenario with steps and times; the plant that trains its shifts with these pages runs without improvisation at two moments of the night: the manual has the same value as the safety training and the process control.

4. Chapter 3: The Inspection of the Kiln System

The third chapter teaches the systematic survey that the mechanical engineers plan during the operation and execute during the stops:

• 3.1 The general: the philosophy of the inspection: the classification of the findings, the priorities (the safety, the reliability, the economics), the inspection program of the year: what is checked in the operation (the daily round: the tyres, the rollers, the bearings, the seals), what in the short stops and what in the major shutdowns (the shell, the interior, the refractory); the documentation (the reports, the photos, the records of the cracks, the evolution curves between the campaigns).
• 3.2 The inspection — the methods: the measurement techniques: the shell ovality — measuring device; the tire and the roller diameters with the callipers and the wear measurement; the axial movements (the creep, the support drift); the vibration of the bearings; the temperature by thermography; the ultrasonic thickness of the shell (de-grid); the crack detection of the welded seams; the gear and the pinion wear and the backlash; the alignment survey; each measurement with the limits and the interpretation: the manual is the format of the inspection report of the kiln.
• The inspection beyond the kiln: the ductwork, the cyclones, the seals, the chimney and the environment: the complete survey of the line: the report structure that the engineer follows and that the plant’s management approves the repair list from.

This chapter is the one that the maintenance team copies into its own templates: the inspection of the kiln is the determination of the repairs of the next shutdown, and the manual formats it with the precision of the supplier.

5. The Working Cycle of the Manual: Between Outages

In the life of the year, the three chapters of the manual are used at three moments:

This triple use is where the manual differs from the generic maintenance books: it is alive: it is used on the spot, with the machine in front, with the hour of the shutdown as deadline: the copy that lives in the maintenance office and the control room, not on the library shelf; the well-worn pages of the emergency chapter in a plant that has survived its trips testify more than any review of its value.

5.1 The Drive Train and the Girth Gear: The Maintenance of the Rotation

A whole set of the pages of the manual is dedicated to the transmission of the kiln, because the drive is the mechanical heart of the rotation: without it the kiln stops and the whole line stops. The subjects developed:

• The main drive train: the motor, the gearbox with the lubrication and the oil analysis, the coupling (the alignment of the shafts, the flexible elements), the pinion and the girth gear: the components of the rotation chain; the chapter gives the maintenance of each: the oil grades and the intervals, the bearing clearances, the coupling alignment limits, the vibration limits of the gearbox.
• The gear mesh: the correct mesh of the pinion with the girth gear: the backlash, the contact pattern (the painted contact check), the axial alignment of the two gears; the wear of the teeth (the pitting, the scuffing, the breakage) and the classification of the damage with the repair decisions; the lubrication of the open gear: the spray systems, the viscosity of the open gear lubricant at the temperature of the plant, the intervals of the spray and the film control.
• The auxiliary drive: the secondary engine that turns the kiln at low speed during the stops and the power failures: the emergency use (the turning to avoid the kiln bending from the heat), the maintenance of the auxiliary (the clutch, the chain or the coupling, the diesel option) and the periodic tests of the engagement: the page of the “rotation guarantee” of the line.
• The thrust and the axial control: the axial control rollers (the hydraulic or the mechanical), the thrust load measurement, the adjustment of the kiln direction of travel, the repair of the thrust rollers: the axial behavior of the kiln is one of the first symptoms of the misalignment, and the chapter teaches the reading.

For the reliability engineer this drive block is the highest value part of the document: the failures of the kiln drive are among the longest outages of the plant, and the prevention is entirely mechanical: the mesh, the lube and the alignment of this chapter.

5.2 The Seals and the Peripheral Systems: The Leaks of the Line

Beyond the shell and the supports, the manual covers the peripheral mechanical systems that the kiln cannot operate without:

• The inlet and the outlet seals: the seals of the rotating shell against the stationary housings: the types (the laminated, the finger, the pneumatic), the wear of the lamellas, the adjustment and the replacement; the false air of the seals costs the heat balance (the O2 of the system) and the chapter links the seal maintenance to the process numbers: a leaking inlet seal is a false air hole at the hottest point of the system.
• The cooler chain: the grate, the segments, the wheels, the hydraulic or the mechanical drive of the grate: the maintenance and the stop procedures already seen in chapter 2.
• The dust systems: the extraction of the kiln: the ducts, the expansion joints, the fans, the ESP and the bag filter: the mechanical care of the environmental chain and its inspection in the stops.
• The water systems: the cooling of the bearings and the seals, the water supply loops, the flow and the temperature monitoring: the small pipes whose failure takes the kiln down.

These pages are the “whole machine” memory of the manual: the kiln is not only the shell; it is the sum of the seals, the chains and the auxiliaries, and the maintenance that ignores them is incomplete.

5.3 The Condition Monitoring and the Modern Maintenance Organization

In the same modern vein, the manual integrates the condition-based maintenance of the kiln systems:

• The vibration monitoring: the measurements on the bearings of the rollers, the gearbox and the fans; the trend of the velocities and the acceleration; the limits and the alarm setting; the connection between the vibration and the mechanical faults: the unbalance, the misalignment, the bearing damage: the weekly campaign of the plant’s vibration engineer.
• The thermography: the shell and the bearings in the thermal images; the hot spots of the shell (the lining gaps and the coating loss), the bearing temperature anomalies, the electrical equipment of the ESP: the modern eye of the inspection of chapter 3, page by page.
• The oil analysis: the sampling of the gearbox and the bearing oils: the wear particles (the ferrography, the spectro), the contamination (the water, the particles), the physical properties (the viscosity, the acidity): the prediction of the failure before the vibration feels it.
• The documentation and the history: the maintenance records, the defect lists, the repair histories, the planning of the shutdowns from the inspection results: the manual closes the cycle: measure, document, plan, execute, re-measure: the modern maintenance loop of the plant.

With this block the manual is not a relic of the paper age: it is the organization that the digital plant of today executes, with the same content and the sensors of the modern instruments.

5.4 The Outage Management: From the Inspection to the Restart

Finally, the manual covers the discipline of the shutdown itself, the most expensive hours of the year:

• The planning: the work list built from the inspections, the priorities, the critical path of the outage (the kiln, the refractory, the grate), the resources, the permits: the “shutdown bible” of the plant has its seed in the pages of the inspection chapter and the procedures of chapter 2.
• The execution: the lockout/tagout of the kiln drive and the fuel, the confined space entry (the kiln, the cyclone, the chimney), the lifting plans, the welding on the shell with the preheating and the stress relief, the reinstallation of the refractory with the curing: the manual’s design chapter gives the technical justification of each repair step.
• The restart: the rechecking of the alignment, the meshes, the seals, the preheating of the kiln (the ramp), the turn of the auxiliary drive, the slow rotation and the ramp of the production: the sequence that brings the line back to the 24h operation without a fresh failure.

This is where the whole manual pays: the plant that knows its machine (chapter 1), answers its emergencies (chapter 2) and inspects with method (chapter 3) plans its outages with the precision of the supplier, and the hours saved at every shutdown are worth the price of the library many times over.

The maintenance manual fits the library in a unique position:

• With the FLS Burner Bible: the process brother of the same house: the Bible gives the calculations and the process (the flame, the combustion); this manual gives the machine (the shell, the tyres, the stops): the two documents of the supplier installed side by side give the complete kiln: the process and the hardware.
• With the Holderbank courses: the courses give the generalist formation; the manual gives the mechanical depth of the kiln: the course covers, the manual specializes: the training program of the plants pairs the two.
• With the Lafarge materials: the producer’s engineering (the quaternary operation) gives the operating decisions; the manual gives the maintenance execution of the same line: the operation and the repair of the same machine, seen by the two optics.
• With Duda’s Data Book: the datasheet of the kiln equipment and the installation; the maintenance of the smooth; the book of the drawings and the book of the care.
• With the Excel tools: the tools of the package (the heat balance, the mill) do not cover the mechanic; the manual covers it exhaustively: the complete workbench of the kiln: process, geometry, procedure, inspection.

7. The Target Reader and the Value of the Manual

The manual is built for the ones who touch the machine:

• The mechanical maintenance engineers: the base of the alignment, the inspection and the repair of the kiln; the first book that the young mechanical engineer of a cement plant must master, before or after the experience of the first shutdown.
• The shift and process engineers: the emergency procedures: the moment of the stop is not the moment of the discussion: the manual gives the prepackaged action; the same pages serve the operator training of the plants, where the shift is evaluated on the chronology of a simulated trip.
• The plant managers: the understanding of the structural risks (the shell fatigue, the crank of the kiln), to decide the money of the inspections and the repairs with knowledge rather than with fear of the consequences.
• The students and the trainees: the 197 pages as the curriculum: from the anatomy of the machine to the inspection: the best self-study manual of the mechanical kiln field, with the figures and the procedures of the supplier.
• The insurance and the audit engineers: the reference of the correct practice: the inspection programs and the stop disciplines of the document serve as the checklists of the technical audits of the plants of any ownership.

For these readers the document easily justifies itself: the cost of a kiln outage is orders of magnitude higher than the cost of the library that prevents or aborts it.

8. Frequently Asked Questions

Is the manual about the process or the machinery?

It is the mechanical maintenance of the kiln systems: the structure, the supports, the stops and the inspection. The process of the same kiln (the flame, the combustion, the heat) is covered by the FLS Burner Bible of the same package: the two are the pair of the kiln: the hardware and the process, both from the same supplier and in the same corporate notation: the reader of the two works in the language of the house.

Does the manual include the alignment of the kiln: the measurements and the adjustment?

Yes, at the core: the chapter of the design considerations carries the alignment of the shell axis (the kiln crank), the roller adjustment and the measurement campaign; the inspection chapter repeats the measurements at each survey; the alignment is treated as the discipline that protects the shell and the supports from the bending and the fatigue: the pages that the alignment teams of the service companies use as the reference of the procedure.

Are the stop procedures applicable to my plant (an other supplier)’s kilns?

The framework of the procedures is universal: the stop of the coal, of the calciner, of the cooler, of the ESP: the physics of the sequence is the same for every line built by any supplier; the manual’s rigorous steps serve as the pattern that each plant adapts to its own equipment, and the plants that wrote their own “stop points” largely began with this document.

The manual is from the Global Services training of FLS: is it a complete manual or a summary?

It is the complete course volume: 197 pages with the contents here walked through (design, procedures, inspection); the pages include the drawings, the figures and the detail of the steps: the document of the original course itself, not a summary; the reading at home gives the same formation as the course and starts of the supplier.

Does the edition include figures and drawings?

Yes: the original technical figures (the components, the geometry, the inspection masks, the procedures) are reproduced in the PDF; the viewer zooms on the details of the measuring positions and the parts: the scan of the corporate document, complete with its figures.

Do I receive the document with the other FLS files of the package?

Yes: the package includes the other FLS files (the process Bible, the kiln mechanical, the burner): the purchase of the Complete Package (931 files, $249.99 one-time, PayPal) delivers them together with the instant link by e-mail: the supplier’s shelf of the cement industry at the price of a single course.

9. Conclusion

Mechanical Maintenance of Kiln Systems is the mechanical contract of the kiln: the design reasoning of the shell and the supports, the emergency procedures of every fuel and every line unit, and the systematic inspection of the machine — the whole engineering maintenance of the rotary kiln as the supplier itself teaches it, in 197 dense pages. In the Complete Cement Technical Package it completes the kiln corner of the library together with the Burner Bible and the process courses: the machine, the flame and the procedure, all at hand. Get the package — $249.99, one-time, instant download, lifetime access — and put the maintenance doctrine of the leader next to your kiln’s control room: the next inspection will be better planned, the next emergency better answered, and the kiln will live the years the design promised, keeping the production and the cost of the plant out of the danger zone. The manual arrives with the complete library, the Excel calculators and the courses of the package, ready for the next shutdown.

This file is part of the Complete Cement Technical Package (931 files) available from cementequipment.org. Contents © respective rights holders; library copy for the licensed single user.