A Solution For Estimation of Cement's Strength Developed by Nuh Cement
Nuh Cement is an open minded and innovative-thinking cement producer with a capacity of 5.7 Mt/year and a clinker capacity of 4.4 Mt/year.
Operating since 1969, the company is the fourth-largest producer in Turkey and has developed – and is still developing – a plethora of projects including electrified excavators and trucks, MgO Suspension and Virtual Quality Assistance (VQA).
Under the idea of a Virtual Quality Assistance, the management team has given the Research and Development (R&D) department the task of estimating the 28th day’s strength of cement in order to gain of an understanding of the quality control data of cement.
R&D, VQA Software Development:
Erbil Utku and Cagla Demirbek
Following intensive support from the Quality Control and Production departments, R&D has finalised a software called Dayanimci, which translates from Turkish as “strength finder”, with an estimation success of 95-98% for calculating the 28th day’s strength of cement, which is now under licence protection.
For the input data, the software requires Blaine, SO3, C3S, MgO, Total Alkali, C3A, LSF, C2S.
As a result of its simple interface, the software is intended to be easy to use.
Figure 1: User Interface
Basic input data are entered to the software, like Blaine, C3S, LSF etc. Following this, 3 different methods show the calculated strength values of 2, 7 and 28 days later.
The software chooses the most realistic estimation and presents it on a blue background. If meanwhile real values have appeared in Quality Control, they will be given in the next column as reference, too.
The following applications of note are some of the possible areas where Dayanimci can be of use to the cement industry:
- As Quality Control and Production know the strength of the cement beforehand, they gain important time to react if needed.
- The effect of Blaine input to strength can be used as important parameter in the control of mills in order to save energy.
- Different scenarios and combinations of input parameters can be used for simulations.
- The software can check and verify the quality control analysis data.
- Dayanimci can be used for pre-evaluation of whether clinker should be supplied externally.
Figure 2: The table shows how close the estimations and reality are. The base of calculations is the estimation of cement strength after 28 days.
If the estimation differs from reality below 5%, then it counts as successful and is given as a percentage.
Lines show the periods of comparison: a period in February, the whole of March and 6 months.
Columns show the total and then individually for each input (Blaine, SO3, C3S, etc) how many days the difference of estimation and reality were below 5%.
by Dipl.-Ing. Erbil Utku (T.U. of Vienna),
Nuh Cimento A.S.
General Management Consultant
for Energy Efficiency and R&D