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Ramco Cements, which has commissioned a limestone beneficiation plant at its Alathiyur unit to upgrade the cement raw material and extend the life of its mines, is setting up one more such unit at its factory near Madurai.
Beneficiation is a process by which low-grade limestone, which would otherwise have been rejected, is converted into raw material for cement production.
AV Dharmakrishnan, Chief Executive Officer, Ramco Cements, said the beneficiation plant will help the company extend the life of its limestone mines by 25-30 years.
‘Novel measure’The company is setting up one more such plant at a cost of ₹38 crore in South Tamil Nadu.
This plant will be commissioned in about a month and use a colour-sorter, an optical system, to remove black stones from the crushed limestone.
Limestone beneficiation is a novel attempt in the domestic cement industry, said Dharmakrishnan. Cement-grade limestone can contain about 11-14 per cent silicon dioxide, which can be twice as much in low-grade material.
The company has to blend low-grade limestone with high-quality, sweetener-grade limestone containing 8 per cent silicon dioxide to be able to use the raw material.
Ramco Cements’ is investing over ₹70 crore in beneficiation systems. Its ₹37-crore beneficiation plant at Alathiyur comprises a large, sieved rotating drum that scrubs the limestone in water to remove sand-like waste and deliver beneficiated limestone to the three-million-tonne-a-year cement plant.
There are two beneficiation units, each processing about 200 tonnes of limestone an hour.
The company has a total annual capacity of about 13 million tonnes of cement production across five plants in the South.
Blending processWithout the beneficiation plant, the Alathiyur unit uses about 10,000 tonnes of limestone daily, including 6,800 tonnes of cement-grade limestone and 1,500 tonnes of low-grade raw material blended with 1,700 tonnes of sweetener.
The cement plant can now simply use equal quantities of beneficiated and high-grade limestone.
(The correspondent visited Ramco Cements’ Alathiyur unit on a programme organised by the company.)
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