MANTHAN-15

ISSN: 2321-8134

IJFEAT
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS AND
TECHNOLOGY

Application of electrostatic precipitator in cement

plant
1

Sanjay S. Baghel , Ashishkumar J. Yadav2, Sagar P.Yadav3, Kaustubh Kawale4,

Mohd. Riyaz Mohd. Israil Mansuri5
Student1,2,3,4,5
Email id:ashish.yadav9764@gmail.com
DepartmentofMechanicalEngineering,
JawaharlalDardaInstituteofEngineeringandTechnology, Yavatmal, Maharashtra, India.
Abstract:
Collection efficiency of ESP, as seen in the industrial practice, is summarised. Some main process and
design improvements effectively dealing with the problem of gas and dust characteristics have been discussed.
These are gas conditioning, pulse energisation, ESP-fabric filter (FF) combination, improved horizontal flow as
well as open top ESP.Generally, gas conditioning entails higher operating and maintenance costs. Pulse
energisationallows the use of hot gas, besides reducing the dust emission and power consumption. The improved
horizontal flow ESP has been successfully used in coal dust cleaning. The open top orvertical flow ESP has a
limitation on collection efficiency as it provides for only one electric field. Electrostatic precipitators (ESP) are
used for gas cleaning in almost every section of cement manufacture. Application of ESP is studied, keeping in
view Indian conditions. The characterisation of dust emissions has been done for different units, such as rotary
kiln and raw mill, alkali by-pass, clinker cooler, cement and coal mill, in terms of exit gas quantity, temperature,
dew point, dust content and particle size. It is seen that all these characteristics have a wide range of variance.
The ESP system must effectively deal with these variations. The fundamental analytical expression governing
the performance of ESP, i.e. the Deutsch equation, and that for particle migration velocity, were analysed to
predict the effect of major operating parameters, namely particle size, temperature and applied voltage. Whereas
the migration velocity (and the efficiency) varies directly with the particle size, it is proportional to the square
and square root of applied voltage and absolute temperature of the gas, respectively. The increase in efficiency
due to temperature is not seen in dc based ESP, perhaps due to more pronounced negative effect on the applied
voltage due to the increase in dust resistivity at higher temperatures. The effect of gas and dust characteristics on
the 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
Keywords: Electrostatic precipitator; Gas cleaning; Cement production; Particulate emission control; Air
1. Introduction
Gas cleaning in the cement industry is an
enormous task. The modern process of cement
production involves crushing and grinding of
carbonaceous and clayey raw materials underdry
conditions, thermal processing of finely ground raw
meal, i.e. preheating, proclaimingand sintering in
rotary kiln, cooling of the clinker (sintered
material) on a reciprocatinggrate cooler and further

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grinding and packaging of the product cement.

Besides this, a greatamount of mechanical
conveying is also involved. All these operations
generate a hugequantity of gas and particulates of
varying characteristics, such as temperature,
moisturecontent, particle size distribution, chemical
composition, abrasiveness, etc. The selection ofgas
cleaning equipment depends upon these
characteristics. The commonly used equipmentare
settling chambers, conventional and high efficiency

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cyclones/multi-cyclones, fabricfilters (FF) and

electrostatic precipitators (ESP).

cyclones, unlikeLong dry kiln processes where they

used to condense in ESP.

2. Emission limits

3.2. Alkali by-pass

On average, considering the different unit

operations, nearly 1516Nm3 of gas is
generatedper kg of cement produced. The dust
content may go up to 1000 g/Nm3 gas.
Theemission limits stipulated by Indian Air
Pollution Control Act 1981. The individual Indian
states are free to impose more stringent standards.
In asurvey conducted in 1993, the Central Pollution
Control Board of India found that 57 cementplants
are fully complying with the pollution standards.
The Board is now considering fixingemission
levels for soand Knoxand load based emission
standards for cement plants.

The excess quantity of alkali compounds

present in the raw material adversely affects the
quality of the cement. Most of this alkali is
evaporated inside the kiln and gets recycleddue to
condensation of alkali vapour at the cold raw meal
feed or the top cyclones. In orderto reduce this
recycling a certain quantity of gas is bled off from
the back end of the kiln.This gas contains around
80% alkali. As can be seen from the Table 4: (a)
the temperatureof by-pass gas can go up to 1050_C
and the dew point is very low in the range of 35
45_C,(b) the resistivity of dust is not very high due
to the presence of alkalis but a large
fraction,around 90%, of particles lies below 10 m.

3. Characterisation of exit gas and dust

The characteristics of dust emission from
different unit operations depend upon thematerial
being processed; type of processing, i.e. heating,
sintering, grinding; gas flowrate through the
equipment; fineness of the product; type of
handling operations, etc. Asthese characteristics
vary widely, section-wise evaluation has been done
in the followingparagraphs.
3.1. Pre-heater kiln and raw mill
The ESP has been successfully used to
clean gas coming out from the preheater kiln.The
gas is often taken through the raw mill for material
drying before cleaning in ESP.The design and
operation of a cement kiln has undergone
substantial improvement overpast 30 years. The
fuel crisis made the old wet process change to
semi-wet/dry to longdry and finally to multistage
(46) pre-heater pre-claimer kiln.
The following observations are as follows,
1. As a result of the modernisation from wet to dry
pre-heater kiln, the temperature of exitgas has
increased and the dew point lowered with a
corresponding increase in the dustresistivity.

3.3. Clinker cooler

The sintered material discharged from the
rotary kiln is known as the clinker. A
reciprocatinggrate cooler is largely used for cooling
of clinker from a temperature of around288 J.D.
Banat / Journal of Hazardous Materials B81
(2001) 28 1200_C70_C. This is done by blowing
air, cross-current, through the grates. A part of
thehot air coming out from the grate cooler is used
as secondary combustion air in the kiln orfor raw
meal drying in the grinding mills, the rest is
cleaned in ESP. On the basis of data tabulated in
Table 4 and other laboratory/plant observations, the
following dust characteristicscan be delineated.
1. The dust particles are coarse and abrasive with
the majority lying above 10 m size.
2. Under normal operation, the dust content of exit
gas is in the range of 1520 g/Nm3.However, under
kiln upset conditions, excessive material may pass
through the cooler.Under such conditions, exit gas
temperature may reach 400425_C and the dust
content up to 50 g/Nm3.
3. The dust resistivity is very high (10131014
cm). The peak reaches around 150200_C

2. The particle size distribution has shifted to a

smaller size with 7580% particles lyingbelow
10m.In addition to the above, it is observed that the
alkali content of pre-heater gas from theModern
plant has been considerably reduced. Water-soluble
alkalis (Na, K) are known for their property of
reducing the dust resistivity. The alkali content of
pre-heater exit gas reducesbecause most alkalis get
condensed at the cold raw meal feed or the top

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cooling of cement inside the mill is achieved by air
and waterinjection maintaining the dew point of
exhaust gas at 5060_C.
1. Water injection in the mill increases the dew
point of exhaust gas and reduces the dustresistivity.
Some typical values of dew point vis--vis
resistivity are given as follow.
4. Effect of gas and dust characteristics on ESP
performance
4.1. ESP operating principle

Fig. 1. Dust resistivity vies-`a-vies

temperature
3.4. Cement mill
Modern cement grinding units consist of a
ball mill in closed circuit with an air separator.The
energy efficiency of the ball mill is very low, as
only about 510% of the power suppliedto the mill
is used in grinding work, the rest is wasted in
friction. The power lost in frictionmostly gets
converted into heat and increases the temperature
of the product, cement. Thecement temperature is
not allowed to go beyond 100_C otherwise the
gypsum, an additiveto cement, will dehydrate. The
cooling of cement inside the mill is achieved by air
and waterinjection maintaining the dew point of
exhaust gas at 5060_C.
1. Water injection in the mill increases the dew
point of exhaust gas and reduces the dustresistivity.
Some typical values of dew point vis--vis
resistivity are given as follow.

3.4. Cement mill

Modern cement grinding units consist of a
ball mill in closed circuit with an air separator.The
energy efficiency of the ball mill is very low, as
only about 510% of the power suppliedto the mill
is used in grinding work, the rest is wasted in
friction. The power lost in frictionmostly gets
converted into heat and increases the temperature
of the product, cement. Thecement temperature is
not allowed to go beyond 100_C otherwise the
gypsum, an additiveto cement, will dehydrate. The
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An industrial, single stage, ESP consists

of, high voltage, negatively charged (above 50
kV) discharge electrodes placed between grounded
collecting electrodes. The discharge electrodes are
normally wiresor rods and the collecting electrodes
are vertically hung plates. Under the influence of
corona, generated due to high negative voltage,
dust
particles
get
negatively
charged,
migratetowards and get collected on the collecting
electrodes. The path of the migrating particlesis
normal to the gas flow. Upon collection, dust
particles

Fig. 2. Operating principle of ESP

Discharge their charge to the collecting
electrode. The dust layer formed on the
collectingplates is dislodged by rapping and
collected in hoppers at the bottom of the ESP.The
gas and dust characteristics affect ESPs dust
collection efficiency. The choice ofappropriate ESP
design and other equipment in the dust collection
process depends uponthese characteristics. The
following paragraphs briefly summarise the effect
of these characteristicson the ESP efficiency.
5. Practical considerations
The ESP has been successfully used in the
cement industry for gas cleaning by makingvarious
process and design modifications, to tackle the
effect of gas and dust characteristics.
In the following paragraphs some ESP applications
focusing upon these practicalconsiderations shall
be discussed.

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5.1. Gas conditioning

In Section 5.3, it was seen how gas
temperature and dust resistivity affect the ESP
performance.Gas conditioning is one of the means
to tackle this situation. It comprises anyone or the
combination of the following.
1. Reducing gas temperature.
2. Increasing gas moisture content.
3. Diluting gas by cold air.
4. Increasing the concentration of hydrophilic
compounds, such as K2SO4, in the gas.
The moisture content of the gas is
increased in equipment
called a gas
conditioningtower (Fig. 7). Gas enters at the top of
the tower, flows down and exits at the bottom.
Wateris introduced in the gas stream at the top in
the form of tiny droplets produced by spraynozzles.
As they flow down, water droplets absorb heat
from the gas and get evaporated.The gas gets
cooled and its moisture content is increased. The
in-flow of water is controlledsuch that the entire
quantity introduced at the top gets evaporated and
no water reaches thetower bottom. The handling of
dust collected at the tower bottom, thus becomes
easy. Thecontrol of water flow is achieve by
continuous measurement of outgoing gas
temperature.
For example, in the Kiln section, exit gas
temperature is brought down from 280330 toabout
150_C and the dew point is raised from 40 to about
60_C. The following constraintson the use of gas
conditioning tower have been reported [1].
1. Gas cooled to 150_C cannot be used for further
heat recovery.
2. High cost of electric power and water.
3. Dependence on the availability of water of
acceptable quality.
4. Additional maintenance and unreliability due to
system failures.
The conditioning of gas using cold air and water
injection is practised in cleaning of kilnBy-pass
gas. When the raw mix (used for cement
manufacture) contains higher percentages

Fig. 3. Gas conditioning tower

Ofalkalis, a small quantity of exhaust gas
is by-passed from the back-end of the kiln. This is
done to reduce the alkali circulation. The
temperature of by-pass gas is in the range of900
1000_C with a dew point around 3540_C. The gas
temperature is first brought downto about 500_C
by ambient air dilution and further to around 200_C
in the conditioningtower. Although, the dust
resistivity is not so high in this case (due to the
presence of watersoluble alkalis), increasing
moisture content helps agglomeration and better
collectionof sub-micron alkali particles. Besides,
temperature reduction in conditioning tower
helpsreduce the gas volume.As seen in Section 3.3,
the temperature of exhaust gas from the grate type
clinker coolercan go above 400_C under kiln upset
conditions. Evaporative cooling is sometimes used
tobring down the temperature. Injecting water
spray near the cooler outlet [8] does this
cooling.Gas conditioning by increasing the
concentration of hydrophilic compounds is
relativelynew to the cement industry and more
investigations are required in this area. Addition
ofsmall quantities of potassium sulphate (K2SO4)
considerably reduces the requirement of awater in
the conditioning tower [7]. The effect of K2SO4
conditioning on dust resistivity

Fig. 4. Effect of K2SO4 conditioning on dust

resistivity
5.2. Pulse energisation or hot ESP
gas conditioning results in the loss of vital
heat from gas, highpower and water consumption
due to conditioning tower requirements and high

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maintenance.Therefore, a gas-cleaning technique

allowing the use of hot, unconditioned gas
iswelcome. This is achieved in ESP by pulse
energisation. It allows the application of
highvoltage across the electrodes for efficient
collection of high resistivity dust, without
causingback corona. ESP using pulse energisation
is also called hot ESP, for it allows the passageof
hot gas.As the name indicates, the pulse
energisation technique raises electrode voltage to a
highlevel for a very short time (ms or ms). The
short time duration prevents building up of
ionisedpath for high current or spark-over. Thus,
the advantages of high voltage, namely the
creationof a dense cloud of ions and high field
strength are obtained without affecting the ESP
performance, as no back-corona is created. Pulse
energisation is done in the following two ways.
1. Intermittent (Ms) pulse charging.
2. Multiples (Ms) charging.

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5.2.1. Intermittent pulse charging

A comparative picture of ESP voltage
waveforms obtained by two types of chargingis
shown in Fig. 9. In the case of conventional ESP,
the transformer-rectifier (T/R) setcontrolling
thrusters is fired for each half cycle of the line
power. In the intermittentpulse charging, the
frequency of firing is reduced. This is done by
allowing only thirdor fifth half-wave to pass. This
can be done by microprocessor control. Thus, while
maintainingthe amplitude of conventional halfwave, the current is decreased to 1/3 or 1/5of the
original, thereby reducing the possibility of backcorona flash over. The voltagewaveform has a
pronounced ripple and it can be further increased
by blocking morepulses. The voltage wave form
now becomes a dc base level with pulse
superimposedon it. The pulse duration is around 3
5 mos. The ratio of the total number of
unblockedpulses to the total number of half cycles
is referred to as charging ratio. Reported
experienceon the operation of intermittent pulse
charging in ESP installed after clinkercooler on
five ESPs in South Korea [9] and on a 2500 tonnes
per day dry process inIndia [1], shows that while
the emission levels are maintained more or less
constant,the power consumption was reduced up to
80% in the first case and about 58%, in thesecond.
5.2.2. Multiples charging

Fig. 5. ESP voltage wave forms for different types

of charging
WhereUp is the peak field strength in pulse
energisation, V/m and Eel the average
fieldstrength, V/m.
From Eq. (11) it can be seen that the migration
velocity increases due to a substantial
Increase in the peak voltage up in the pulse
energisation.

As the name indicates, high voltage pulses

of very short
duration are
repeatedly
superimposedon dc base-corona onset-voltage. The
difference with the intermittent charging
isillustrated in Table 6, using typical values of
pulse width and interval.The short duration pulses
are created by placing a storage capacitor after the
high voltagerectifier. The electrical energy
oscillates between ESP and the capacitor until an
essentialportion is used up by ESP. The high
voltage waveform created by these oscillations is
shownin Fig. 9. As can be seen, pulse amplitude
declines progressively as the energy is used to
5.3. Combination of ESP with FF

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The combination of ESP and FF in one
unit is considered in some cases as an effective
alternative to meet the requirements of stringent
emission regulations enforced in somecountries.
The pollution control regulations in India are also
going to be stricter in future.ESPFF combination
is also useful for large size plants, considering large
gas volumesemitted by such plants and the
requirement of large size ESP for gas cleaning. As
anexample, a 4000 tonnes per day cement plant
will emit approximately 0:5_106 m3/h of gasfrom
its preheater kiln at 250_C. This makes ESP size
considerably large, increasing its costbeyond
economic limits. As stated earlier, most of the dust
is precipitated in the initial stagesof the ESP and
the last few stages contribute little to the ESP
efficiency. This is mainly dueto the fine particle
size. On the other hand, the efficiency of a FF is
practically unaffectedby the particle size and is,
therefore highly efficient in collecting the dust
particles.
5.4. Horizontal flow and vertical flow (open top)
ESP
In the modern cement plants, the exhaust
gas from the coal mill circuit requires dustcontrol
measures. Until a few years back, it was the
practice to use coal mill exhaust gasas primary air
in the kiln burner and the coal mill capacity was
balanced with respect tothe kiln requirement. In the
modern efficient burner designs, the quantity of
primary air hasbeen minimised, hence some air has
to be vented out. Secondly, the capacity of mill is
kepton the high side to take care of the
irregularities in the availability of coal. Horizontal
ESPis specially designed for coal mill gas cleaning.
It has the following provisions to minimisethe risk
of explosions.

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Fig. 8. Open-top ESP for explosive dust

1. New precipitator design normally employs two
electric fields. The internal requirement,such as
collecting plates, discharge electrodes and rapping
system, is basically the sameas in a standard ESP.
2. Precipitator casing is reinforced to withstand up
to 2000mmwater gauge (WG) pressureand the
explosion relief panels provided at the roof are
adjusted to open at 1000mmWGpressure.
3. Temperature measurement and warning systems
are provided at sensitive locations suchas
inlet/outlet transition pieces and hoppers.
4. Manually operated CO2 fire extinguishers are
installed.The vertical flow ESP is open to the
atmosphere from the top. The gas flows from
bottomto the top of the ESP. The discharge and
collecting electrodes are arranged horizontally.A
schematic of an open top ESP is given in Fig. 14.
Besides this special provision to takecare of
explosions, normal safety measures, such as
maintaining gas temperature above dewpoint,
provision of O2 and CO2 analyser before ESP with
alarm, trip set-point, periodicchecking of rapping
system, are also required to be incorporated.The
vertical flow ESP is effective in dissipating the
pressure wave upwards and avoidexplosions.
However, its design allows the provision of only
one separate electric fieldwhich puts limit on the
achievable efficiency levels.

6. Conclusions
1. The collection efficiency of ESP falls when the
gas flow rate is increased beyond the

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Design limits.
2. The performance of ESP is not significantly
affected by a small change in dust
concentration.The resistivity of dust is reduced by
the presence of water soluble alkalis andsulphate
compounds. The presence of chlorides makes the
dust sticky.
3. In the cement industry, the adverse effects of gas
and dust characteristics are effectivelycountered by
making various process and design modifications in
the gas cleaningoperations. Some of which are as
follows:
4. Gas conditioning by either or the combination of
reducing gas temperature, increasinggas moisture
content and diluting gas by cold air. The gas
conditioningtower is generally used for the
purpose. It faces certain constraints like high costof
operation and maintenance, loss of useful heat and
unreliability due to systemfailures.
5. The technique of pulse energisation or hot ESP
allows the use of hot, unconditionedgases in ESP. It
results in substantial reduction in the dust emission
as well as thepower consumption.

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which effectively takes care of the main concern,
that of explosion.

7. References
[1] S.B. Rontgen, Pollution control with
electrostatic precipitators in cement plants, in:
Proceedings of the
National Seminar on Electrostatic Precipitators,
National Thermal Power Corporation, New Delhi,
1214
November 1991, pp. I/6580.
[2] A. Mookharjea, Design operation and
maintenance of electrostatic precipitator, in:
Proceedings of the Training
Course on Air Pollution Control in Cement Plants,
National Council for Cement and Building
Materials, New
Delhi, 2225 March 1982.
308 J.D. Banat / Journal of Hazardous Materials
B81 (2001) 285308

6. The technique of combining ESP with FF has

been successfully used in somecement plants.
Plants where the size of ESP becomes very large on
account of large gas volumes.

[3] J.D. Banat, Air separation in finish grinding,

Indian Cement Industry Desk Book-1993, Vol. 3,
1993

7. The horizontal ESP has been successfully used

in coal mill gas cleaning due to itsspecial design

[4] R.C. Flanagan, J.H. Seinfeld, Fundamentals of

Air Pollution Engineering, Prentice Hall, New
Jersey, 1988,

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