CEMENT AMERICAS • Winter 2015 • www.cementamericas.com
FEATURE
ASH GROVE CEMENT
18
By Mark S. Kuhar
Bringing Out The Big Guns
AIR CANNONS HAMMER PREHEATER BUILDUP AT NEBRASKA CEMENT PLANT.
T
he largest American-owned ce-
ment manufacturer in the nation
has solved a buildup problem in the
precalciner of its Nebraska plant by
installing a network of high-perfor-
mance air cannons, improving mate-
rial flow and drastically reducing the
need to hydro-lance.
The series of 25 air cannons from
Martin Engineering fires a powerful
discharge of compressed air in a pre-
scribed pattern to remove material
that becomes adhered to the vessel
walls. The solution helps the plant
avoid downtime and eliminate the
potential for water blasting to cause
lumps of material to fall into the kiln
feed and interfere with production.
Ash Grove Cement is the sixth-largest
producer in the U.S., with nine man-
ufacturing plants, two deep-water
import terminals and a major quarry
operation in Blubber Bay, British Co-
lumbia, Canada.
In all, the company has a total annual
capacity of nearly 9 million short tons
(st) of cement, including a wide
range of specialty products for diffi-
cult service environments. Located
on the south bank of the Platte River