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Innomotics: transforming the cement industry with innovative motor solutions and AI technology

Published by , Editorial Assistant
World Cement,


Innomotics is a global company supplying a wide range of products, services, and solutions to major industries, including mining, oil & gas, water, cement, hydrogen, and car-making. Created from Siemens AG’s Large Drives division, the company is building on a 150 year tradition of engineering and innovation.

Although headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany, the company operates eighteen factories worldwide as well as seven digital hubs and counts on a team of more than 15 000 experts which can support customers around the clock no matter where they located in the world.

Among the most important sectors which Innomotics serves is the global cement industry which plays a key role in production of all the infrastructure in which we live, work, and travel. Over its many decades serving its many customers in the sector, Innomotics has gained significant experience participating in the construction of new cement works and the expansion of existing ones.

Innomotics can design and build a wide range of high voltage motors and low voltage motors which are used for moving and processing material at each stage of the cement production process. Motors account for approximately 90% of the electrical energy consumed in cement production so savings made here can make a significant contribution to a cement plant’s overall efficiency.

As well as electrical motors, Innomotics can provide much of the electrical equipment to ensure the reliable power supply required by a cement plant, including E-Houses, transformers, and switchgear models. In addition, Innomotics is increasingly providing a number of technological solutions, based on Automation and Digitalisation, that help customers run their assets as efficiently as possible. The company has more than 40 years of experience and collaboration with leading cement producers installing process control systems in more than 900 cement plants worldwide. Based on ACS7, the CEMAT control system offers a near real-time overview of all stages of cement production to ensure superior plant performance.

To stay ahead of the competition, businesses in all sectors are turning to technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Machine Learning to collect and analyse data and provide insights into how incremental improvements can be made. Given the environmental challenges facing the cement industry, greater efficiency not only helps companies’ bottom lines but allows them to reduce their environmental impact by cutting consumption of fuels and other inputs and reducing atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases.

One of the most important ways that cement producers have sought to reduce costs and their environmental footprint in recent years is by substituting conventional fuel with alternatives. However, this creates an additional challenge. As these alternate fuels – often household rubbish and other waste – is much less homogenous than conventional fuels, they do not burn in a consistent manner. This makes it much harder for the operators of a cement kiln to keep clinker burning at a consistent rate and temperature, potentially reducing the productivity of the whole plant. Operators must closely monitor indicators such as temperature, clinker volumes and fuel consumption to keep conditions in the preheater process, the kiln, and the cooling process at optimum levels to ensure there is no drop in the performance of the asset.

Identifying this problem, Innomotics has worked with major cement producers to develop a solution which use Artificial Intelligence to support operators in this task. The Innomotics AIKiln and AIMill solutions analyse huge volumes of past operational data and then applies this is to current conditions to identify indicators that signal conditions may move beyond preestablished criteria. The neural network ensures that the solution is constantly learning, optimising the recommendations it makes. It then advises operators what remedial actions should be taken to avoid any deterioration in the performance. Alternatively, it can take the decisions itself with operators providing oversight.

An AIMill solution has already implemented at the Nimbahera cement plant in Rajashstan, India which is owned by Wonder Cement, one of the country’s newest cement producers. Meanwhile, AIKiln is helping to run a major cement plant in Hungary. According to Sunny Schoone, a Global Sales Expert and Portfolio Manager for Digitalisation Solutions, management and operators were initially skeptical about whether advice generated by a computer would have on their plant’s performance.

“We try from the beginning to sit with the operators, learn from them, and take them with us on this journey,” he explains. However, all involved were quickly convinced once they saw the impact that AI was having. With production criteria contained within a preset range, unplanned downtimes were minimised, fuel consumption fell which also helped to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The advantages of the solution have become evident quite quickly. The advice provided by the AI solution meant more senior and experienced staff did not have to oversee the pyro process so closely, freeing up time up to carry out more strategic roles that add more value to the production process. “From day one, with the support of AIKiln, the operators are able to concentrate more on the really difficult decisions,” explains Schoone. Following the initial success in Asia and Europe, Innomotics plans to deploy this pioneering solution around the world. “We are looking forward to working with as many cement plants as possible, helping our end customers and developing new functionalities for this technology,” Schoone adds.


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Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/special-reports/31102024/innomotics-transforming-the-cement-industry-with-innovative-motor-solutions-and-ai-technology/

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European cement news