Lehigh completes annual maintenance project
Lehigh completes annual maintenance project
By: Jim Simmons
Topics:
Posted by editor Tue Nov 30, 1999 00:00:00 PST
Viewed 395 times
0 responses 0 comments Lehigh Southwest Cement Company’s Tehachapi Plant recently completed its annual maintenance shutdown project, known in the industry as the “outage.”
Beginning on March 27 with heat being withdrawn from the kiln, plant workers started an 18-day process of cooling down the facility, opening up major processing units, performing substantial refurbishments and upgrades, and making sure everything worked right as the plant was brought back into operating condition on April 14.
This annual event is important for several reasons. First, it ensures that the plant can continue to operate safely and reliably in a strong market and protect local jobs and contribute to the tax base. Second, it contributes a budget of over $5 million to the roughly 340 individuals who perform contract work and assist plant employees with all of the maintenance efforts. Third, by installing new control systems and the latest equipment, the plant is ready to compete in the global cement marketplace and offer a quality product to customers.
Industrial manufacturing is of growing interest to many in the region because it is so rare and fascinating, while providing for large payrolls and the largest multiplier effect, or added extra jobs in a region, of any economic sector. But it also retains legions of fans and supporters who have either worked in local plants or have benefited from them.
For all of these “students” of manufacturing, the following projects completed during the recent Lehigh outage will be of interest:
• lifted and flipped the giant kiln gear to promote balanced wear
• relined the preheat-tower vessel with refractory (brick)
• installed electronic coal metering system
• installed Siemens CEMAT control systems for the raw mill
In the important arena of high energy costs and reliability, the plant has taken another positive step forward during this outage with the installation of two new variable frequency drives for fans in order to capture energy savings that otherwise would have been wasted.
Lehigh outage story
The key to this outage was to re-brick much of the 195-foot long kiln. The kiln, where operating temperatures can soar to 2800 degrees F, is the heart of the cement plant. This is where the powdered raw material is transformed into the hard nodules of “clinker,” the material that later becomes the gray powder that is cement.
The inside of the kiln is lined with refractory and brick, which is many inches thick when new, but thins over time with the heavy tumbling and pounding that occurs during processing. The thinning varies, so much expertise is employed in determining how much refractory and brick to replace each year.
This year’s outage went well, with a good safety performance and a reliable return to productive operations. With the current strong market, the plant should be able to produce and sell well over 800,000 tons of quality cement products this year.
“We are pleased to be back operating safely and reliably after this outage,” said Lehigh Southwest Plant Manager Axel Conrads. “We are now able to look forward a bit to our plans to engage the community as we celebrate our 100th anniversary in 2008.”
Lehigh Southwest Cement Company is part of Lehigh Cement Company of Allentown, Penn., a unit of Heidelberg Cement in Germany. The Tehachapi plant employs 120 people, has an annual payroll including benefits of over $7 million, and produces cement products for housing and construction around the southwestern United States.
| Send to a Friend | Report a Violation |
