Aspen Plus Based Study on the Oxygen Consumption of Alternative Fuels in the Cement Calciner Combustion Process

The cement industry is a typical high energy industry. The cement pre-calcining kiln process needs amounts of fuels to combust which can provide heat for the raw material decomposition and the clinker calcination. Utilizations of alternative fuels in the cement kiln process is an efficacious way to reduce the energy consumption of the cement industry, and the study on the effect of alternative fuels on other technological parameters has become an important subject in the cement technology research area. A new research method for the cement calciner based on the process simulation software Aspen Plus is proposed in this paper, and used to analyze the amount of the combustion air in calciner combustion processes when different alternative fuels (Reference Condition: only coal as fuel; Condition 1: only petcoke as fuel; Condition 2: 50% coal and 50% petcoke as fuels; Condition 3: 50% coal and 50% MBM as fuels; Condition 4: 50% petcoke and 50% MBM as fuels) are employed in the calciner. The results show that compared with the Reference Condition, extra 41.5%, 14.6% and 8.5% of the combustion air is needed in Condition 1, 2 and 4, whereas Condition 3 needs less combustion air. The result of this paper can be used to instruct to determine the amount of the tertiary air in different alternative fuel conditions of the calciner.