Effect of clinker bed height on energetic and exergetic in clinker coolers used in cement plant

Improving energetic and exergetic recovery in clinker cooler plays a critical role on energy recovery in cement plant operations. Ineffective cooling of clinker inside the cooler is a major challenge in cement industry and this has an adverse effect on the entire cement production process and quality of cement, increase in maintenance cost and environmental impact due to energy loss to the environment. This research (effect of clinker bed height on energetic and exergetic in clinker cooler used in cement plant) tends to analyze ways in improving the clinker cooler performance. A 3-D clinker model “test rig” was developed using SolidWorks Computer Aided Design (CAD) software based on the geometrical parameters adopted in the conceptual design. The model was scaled down to a ratio 25:1, which is, the existing cooler is twenty-five and model is one, having fixed values of length 1.3 m, width 0.3 m and variable clinker bed height 0.3, 0.4 and 0.6 m. The optima exergetic efficiency of the clinker model was 54.22% and energetic efficiency of the model which was 81.07% using 0.6 m which was the optima clinker bed height which represent the overall performance of the model. Exergy efficiency and exergetic recovery for clinker bed of 0.3 and 0.4 m are 48.48, 50.64, 43.97 and 46.44% respectively. Key words: Clinker cooler, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), energetic efficiency and exergetic efficiency.