Interfaces for drives in cement plants: possibilities and recommended practice

During the last years, the degree of automation of cement plants has increased. This trend also has an impact on the design and engineering of electric drives for such plants. Since electric drives are more and more integrated into the plant control the communication between plant control system and electric drives has become an important part of the electric drive specification and design. In the past, the number of signals between the plant control and electric drives were hardwired and thus kept to a minimum. The paper describes different possibilities how the interface between plant control and a drives system can be approached and explains advantages and disadvantages of these options. It gives an overview of bus systems used in the cement industry and shows differences among them as well as practical limitations. It shows the difference between hardwired interfaces and communication with bus systems, additional opportunities that today's interfaces offer as well as future possibilities. The authors present an outlook how electric drives could be integrated into the plant control in the future.