Powder Technology 221 (2012) 183–188

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Powder Technology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/powtec

An industrial comparative study of cement clinker grinding systems regarding the

specific energy consumption and cement properties
Cetin Hosten a,⁎, Berkan Fidan b
a
Department of Mining Engineering, Middle East Technical University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey
b
Cement Production Chief, Denizli Cement Plant, 20100 Denizli, Turkey

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper is concerned with a comparative analysis of modern cement grinding systems, namely, combined
Received 30 September 2011 grinding (Comflex®), high-pressure roll mill (HPRM) grinding, and horizontal roller mill (Horomill®) grind-
Received in revised form 14 December 2011 ing. Cement production trials were run with these grinding systems in the same cement plant by using the
Accepted 28 December 2011
same clinker/gypsum feed to produce cements of almost identical chemical compositions and similar Blaine
Available online 4 January 2012
fineness values of about 3600 cm 2/g. The grinding systems were compared in terms of specific energy con-
Keywords:
sumption and mortar properties of the produced cements. The specific energy consumption and the cement
Cement manufacture setting times increased in the order of combined grinding, HPRM grinding, and horizontal roller mill grinding.
Grinding No significant difference was detectable among the water demands of the cements from the three grinding
Specific energy systems. The HPRM cement was superior in strength development, particularly at early ages.
Mortar properties © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Cement production is an energy intensive industry requiring ap-
proximately 830–1100 kWh/t cement. Fuel energy represents about
90% of this total specific energy consumption and the share of
electrical energy is about 10%. The electrical energy consumed in
the conventional cement making process is typically 95 to 110 kWh
per ton of cement [1]. Almost 70% of this electrical energy is used
for comminution, which includes crushing and grinding of cement
raw materials and clinker grinding. The clinker grinding stage
accounts for approximately 40% of the electric energy consumed in
cement production. Because of such a high level of energy demand
and the inherent energy inefficiency of conventional ball mill grind-
ing, the cement industry has continually searched for new grinding
mill designs and/or grinding system configurations that can reduce
the energy consumption.
Besides energy consumption, the grinding system has an impor-
tant influence on the particle size distribution and particle shape of
the product cement, as well as on the reactivity of the clinker phases
and the temperature-dependent extent of dehydration of gypsum
interground with clinker. All these factors, in turn, affect mortar
properties of the product cement such as water demand, initial and
final setting times and strength development [2,3].
Despite their high specific energy demand, two-compartment ball
mills in closed circuit with air separators have been traditionally used
for cement finish grinding because of their reliability and the
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: + 90 312 2102661.
E-mail address: hosten@metu.edu.tr (C. Hosten).
favorable properties of the product cement. Ball mills, in fact, are
the most energy inefficient grinding mills. They suffer from consider-
able energy loss in the form of heat due to friction in a tumbling mass
of balls which transfers input energy to an unconfined bed of
particles. In an unconfined bed of particles the entrapment of parti-
cles in the impact zone between the balls is highly probabilistic and
far from the conditions required for optimum conversion of the
input energy to useful comminution energy. Energy efficiency of a
ball mill depends on a number of factors such as ball filling ratio,
the mill length/diameter ratio, size composition of the ball charge,
circulation ratio, throughput, and the fineness of the feed and prod-
uct. High-pressure comminution with vertical roller mills, high-
pressure roll mills (HPRM) or the horizontal roller mill (Horomill®)
has found considerable popularity over the last two decades for im-
proving capacity and reducing specific energy consumption in clinker
grinding circuits [1,4]. In high-pressure mills the input energy is
directly transferred to a confined bed of particles under compression
where comminution occurs primarily by very large inter-particle
stresses generated locally within the compressed bed. HPRM's are
generally placed upstream of conventional ball mill systems as pre-
grinding units to produce a fraction of the circuit product and weaken
the particles remaining coarser than the product size, which are
subsequently ground in ball mills. This combined mode of grinding re-
quires many material transport units (belt conveyors, elevators and
air-slides), hydraulic systems, and air classifiers, and this multitude of
equipment complicates the process. Horomill® operating in closed cir-
cuit with an air classifier, however, was introduced as a single-stage
grinding unit to overcome the operational drawbacks of the combined
grinding systems while achieving comparable energy efficiency. In
comparison with ball mills, vertical roller mills can achieve an energy

0032-5910/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.powtec.2011.12.065
184 C. Hosten, B. Fidan / Powder Technology 221 (2012) 183–188
saving of up to 30%, horizontal roller mills up to 35%, and HPRM's up to
50% [5,6]. This comparison, however, reflects the power consumption
of the mill only and does not include air classifier and auxiliary equip-
ment like conveyors and dust collectors.
A review of the literature showed that some energy-based com-
parisons of the current cement grinding systems have been made.
For example, Schnatz and Knobloch [7] reported specific energy con-
sumptions of 10.93 kWh/t and 16.28 kWh/t for the HPRM and the ball
mill, respectively, operated in a combined grinding process producing
CEM I 42.5 type cement of 3970 cm 2/g Blaine fineness at a throughput
of 140 t/h. Seebach and co-workers [5] reported plant results from of
a combined grinding process. The process had a closed-circuit HPRM
system producing an intermediate product upstream of a convention-
al closed-circuit ball mill system that produced a final cement product
of 3200 cm 2/g Blaine fineness at a throughput of 192.7 t/h. The
specific energy consumption for the major equipment of the com-
bined process was reported to be 22.2 kWh/t. When only the HPRM
system or the ball mill system was operated to produce cements of
the same fineness as the combined process cement, the system
throughput was reduced to 122.4 t/h in the HPRM-only case and to
72.3 t/h in the ball-mill-only case, with the corresponding specific
energy consumptions of 18.8 kWh/t and 35.7 kWh/t. The works men-
tioned above, however, did not provide any comparison of the mortar
properties of the cements produced.
There are comparatively fewer industrial results reported on the
energy consumption of the horizontal roller mill systems. The operat-
ing results of the horizontal mill (Horomill®) in the Trino cement
works for the production of various types of cements having different
Blaine fineness and mill feed compositions indicated energy savings
of 35 to 40% when compared with the specific energy consumption
of an optimized ball mill in the same plant [4]. The energy consump-
tion varied in the range of 15.4–23.4 kWh/t for the mill only and of
22.2–30.3 kWh/t for the grinding plant at a throughput range of
19.7–30.0 t/h. The water demand of the Horomill® cement paste
was reported to be 2% higher than for the ball mill cement, with the
same mortar strength. More recently, Genc and Benzer [8] compared
energy consumptions of an industrial horizontal roller mill grinding
system and a hybrid HPRM/ball mill grinding system when the two
systems produced different types of cement with different pozzolanic
additives. Specific energy consumptions were reported as 20.9 kWh/t
in the horizontal roller mill system at a throughput of 106 t/h and
28.5 kWh/t in the hybrid system at a throughput of 85 t/h. Blaine
values and mortar properties of the cements, however, were not
reported in their study.
An overview of the literature indicates that the three clinker
grinding systems mentioned above have been investigated separately
or two together on the basis of energy consumption by using different
feed materials and producing different type of cements, mostly with-
out the accompanying mortar properties of the produced cements.
Direct comparisons of the results, however, should suffer from some
limitations since no two plants are the same as to machine design
and operating parameters. Extending the range of available data on
the comparison of these systems, particularly with tests conducted
in the same plant, would be beneficial for the industry with a goal
of better understanding the capabilities of the grinding systems.
This paper presents an investigation carried out to compare the
three clinker grinding systems, namely, the combined grinding (Com-
flex®) circuit, HPRM-only circuit, and the horizontal roller mill
Table 1
Chemical compositions of the cement clinker and the gypsum used in the study.
SiO2 (%) Al2O3 (%) Fe2O3 (%) CaO (%)
Clinker 21.07 5.17 3.88 65.47
Gypsum 0.29 0.01 0.03 33.56
* Water of hydration, excluding 0.92% of moisture.
(Horomill®) circuit, available in the same industrial plant. The grind-
ing systems were operated using the same clinker/gypsum feed to
produce CEM I 42.5 R Portland cements with almost identical
chemical compositions and similar Blaine specific surface areas so
that the sole influence of the grinding mode on the specific energy
consumption and cement mortar properties could be delineated.
2. Experimental work
The same lots of Portland cement clinker and natural gypsum
(CaSO4.2H2O) were used in this industrial-plant-scale experimental
work to eliminate the potential effects of variations in the feed to
the grinding systems. Chemical compositions of the clinker and the
gypsum, measured by X-ray fluorescence analysis, are given in
Table 1. Dehydration behavior of the gypsum was determined by a
simple thermal treatment because the extent of dehydration, and
hence its conversion to hemihydrate (CaSO4.1/2H2O), may be affected
by the temperature of a grinding mill product. After removing the
moisture from the gypsum test sample at 45 ± 5 °C in a drying oven,
the sample was then heated in a furnace with controllable tempera-
ture settings. The temperature was increased in a stepwise manner
with increments of 10 °C from 70 to 240 °C. The temperature was
held constant for 10 minutes at the end of each increment, and the
weight loss of the gypsum sample was recorded at the end of this
10-minute period. Fig. 1 presents the temperature-dependent cumu-
lative percent weight loss of the gypsum as a measure of its dehydra-
tion behavior.
A mix containing 95% clinker and 5% gypsum was ground in three
different types of grinding systems in the same plant to make CEM I
42.5 R cements having almost identical chemical compositions and
similar Blaine values of about 3600 cm 2/g. Samples were taken from
intermediate process streams and final product streams of the grind-
ing systems while operating at steady states. The samples were
analyzed for particle size distribution by means of a laser diffraction
analyzer. A series of tests were performed according to the relevant
Turkish standards (TS EN 196-1, TS EN 196-3) to determine the key
quality properties of the final cement products, namely, water
demand, initial and final setting times, and compressive strength.
Electrical energy consumption of the main equipment and that of
the complete grinding circuit were also recorded for an hour at the
steady-state operation during the sampling periods for each system.
The three industrial grinding systems tested in this study were 1)
the combined grinding system (Comflex®) using a HPRM circuit up-
stream of the ball mill circuit to produce a combined final cement
product, 2) HPRM-only system in which the cement was produced
only with the HPRM circuit of the combined grinding system, and
3) the horizontal roller mill (Horomill®) system. Figs. 2 and 3 present
the simplified flow sheets of the tested systems. The combined
grinding system (Comflex®) is a combination of HPRM grinding and
conventional ball milling. In this mode of plant operation, the feed
material (clinker and gypsum) is first crushed and fractured in the
HPRM and then dropped into a static V-separator, which functions
both as a disagglomerator and a classifier for the HPRM product.
The coarse product of the static separator is re-circulated into the
HPRM. The separator's fines are pneumatically transported into a
third generation, high-efficiency dynamic separator. The fine product
stream of the dynamic separator is collected in a bag filter. The fine
particles collected on the filter fabric constitutes a part of the final
MgO (%) SO3 (%) Na2O (%) K2O (%) L.O.I (%) H2O* (%) Free CaO (%)
1.77 1.43 0.14 0.77 0.30 – 1.61
0.57 43.93 – – – 18.43 –
 C. Hosten, B. Fidan / Powder Technology 221 (2012) 183–188 185

100

90

80

70
Dehydration, %

60
Fig. 3. Simplified flow sheet of the horizontal roller mill (Horomill®) system.
50

40 conducted uses the HPRM-only circuit as an alternative to continue

its production when the ball mill circuit is under maintenance. The
30 Horomill® system is also a single-stage comminution system using
a horizontal roller mill operated in closed circuit with a high-
20 efficiency air classifier. The Horomill® is made up of a horizontal ro-
tating shell equipped with a grinding track within which a hydraulic
10 roller exerts pressure on the grinding bed. In the plant investigated,
this system is used more frequently for the production of CEM II
0
50 70 90 110 130 150 170 190
type Portland composite cement or CEM IV type pozzolanic cement
Temperature, °C and rarely for the production of CEM I 42 R cement.

Fig. 1. Dehydration behavior of the gypsum used in the study. 3. Results and discussion

3.1. Particle size distributions

cement product and joins the cement product from the downstream
ball mill circuit before being dispatched into the cement silo. The
coarse particles that are collected at the bottom of the dynamic sepa-
rator flow into a splitter bin. The splitter bin separates the classifier
coarse product into two streams. One stream feeds the ball mill circuit
at a controlled rate matching the ball mill operating capacity and the
second stream, which is the coarse material in excess of the ball mill
capacity, is directed to the HPRM re-circulation stream (Fig. 2). Since
some clinker particles reach the required fineness in the HPRM com-
minution stage without passing through the ball mill, this combined
mode of grinding obviously yields a final cement product composed
of material with mixed physical characteristics, which may affect ce-
ment quality properties. The HPRM-only system is a simple commi-
nution process where the ball mill circuit of the combined grinding
system is not operated and the coarse material in the splitter bin is to-
tally re-circulated to the HPRM. The plant in which this study was
Table 2 presents the operating parameters of the three grinding
systems that processed the same clinker/gypsum feed to produce
cement products of almost identical Blaine fineness. Particle size dis-
tributions of the final cement products of the grinding systems of this
study were well described by the Rosin-Rammler-Sperling-Bennett
(RRSB) function which is defined as [9]
xn
R ¼ 100 exp ½  ð1Þ
k
where R is the cumulative weight percent of particles coarser than
size x, while n and k are the fitted parameters of the RRSB function.
The position parameter k, having the same units as x, is the particle
size at which R takes the value of 36.8% (or, equivalently, the cumula-
tive mass of particles finer than size x is 63.2%). The smaller the

Fig. 2. Simplified flow sheet of the combined grinding (Comflex®) system.

186 C. Hosten, B. Fidan / Powder Technology 221 (2012) 183–188

Table 2 100
Operating parameters of the investigated grinding systems.
90 A
Combined grinding HPRM-only Horomill®
(Comflex®) system system system B
80

Cumulative mass % finer than size

Blaine value, cm2/g 3572 3656 3577
C
45-μm residue, mass % 14.1 7.6 9.3
RRSB position parameter, μm 26.6 22.6 25.0 70
D
RRSB slope 1.18 1.26 1.29
Cement temperature, °C 104 92 63 60
Product density, g/cm3 3.15 3.12 3.14
Throughput in this study, tph 200 95 48
Throughput in regular plant 210–215 110–115 55–60 50
operations *, tph
Specific energy in this study, 40
kWh/t
main-equipment basis 27.3 29.9 33.7
total grinding system 30.6 34.0 37.3 30

* Throughputs for the production of the same type of cement, but with 5% limestone
addition and slightly lower Blaine values. 20

10

position parameter is, the greater the fineness of the particle 0

population. Parameter n is the slope of the straight line fitted to the
measured particle size distribution data and describes the width of
the distribution. The larger the slope is, the narrower the size distri-
bution. Table 2 contains the position parameter and the slope of the
cement products as well as the cumulative mass percentage of parti-
cles coarser than some specific sizes. All three cements have more or
less the same slope parameter with values of about 1.2. This value of
the slope indicates relatively narrow size distributions which are at-
tributed to sharp selectivity of the air separators closing the cement
grinding circuits [10]. The position parameter of the cement produced
in the combined grinding system is slightly coarser than that of the
cements produced in the other two grinding systems. Table 2 also
shows that the combined grinding cement has a relatively higher per-
centage (14.1%) of 45-μm residue than the cements produced in the
other two grinding systems (7.6% and 9.3% for the HPRM-only and
the horizontal roller mill system, respectively). The 45-μm residues
of the ball mill cement and the HPRM cement in the combined grind-
ing system were determined as 21.0% and 9.8%, respectively, by laser
diffraction particle size analysis. These values indicate that the higher
45-μm residue percentage of the combined cement results from the
higher percentage of the residue in the ball mill cement.
Particle size distributions of the cements from the three grinding
systems are presented in Fig. 4. The figure indicates that the HPRM
cement of the combined grinding system has a relatively finer size
distribution than the ball mill cement of the same system, which
resulted from the differences in the classification performances of
the air separators producing these two cements. The Blaine values
of these two cements, composing the combined cement, were mea-
sured to be 3682 cm 2/g and 3447 cm 2/g, respectively. The measured
Blaine values of the combined cement and those of the HPRM and
ball mill cements enabled us to calculate that the HPRM cement con-
stituted 53% of the final combined cement product. This is a typical
value that has been observed repeatedly in regular production opera-
tions of the plant. Size distributions of the cements from the HPRM
circuit are expectedly quite the same irrespective of whether the
HPRM is operated in the combined grinding mode or the
HPRM-only mode, since the same high-efficiency dynamic separator
generated the cement products of similar fineness in both cases.
3.2. Specific energy consumptions
A comparison of the specific energy consumptions of the investigat-
ed grinding systems is given in Table 2 on both the main-equipment
and the whole-grinding-plant basis. The comparison condition for the
three systems was to attain the steady state operation while producing
1 10 100
Particle Size, µm
Fig. 4. Particle size distributions of the cements from the three grinding systems: A) Ball
mill cement of the combined grinding (Comflex®) system; B) HPRM cement of the
combined-grinding system; C) HPRM-only cement; D) Horomill® system cement.
cements of the same Blaine fineness of about 3600 cm2/g at different
throughputs (tons of cement produced per hour) of the systems dictat-
ed by the equipment design capacities. The main-equipment basis
power consumption includes the main drive systems of the mills,
system fans and separators, while the whole-grinding-plant basis
consumption includes also the auxiliary equipment such as material
transport systems, weigh-feeders, filter fans, pneumatic and hydraulic
units. We should note at this point that we did not attempt to determine
throughput-dependent specific energies of the studied systems; how-
ever, the throughputs attained during the investigation were quite
close to the normal operating ranges of the systems in regular produc-
tion operations of the plant as given in Table 2.
From Table 2 it can be seen that the combined grinding system
had the least specific energy consumption (30.6 kWh/t), followed
by the HPRM-only system (34.0 kWh/t) and the horizontal roller
mill system (37.3 kWh/t). The HPRM circuit in the combined grinding
system accounted for about 60% of the measured total energy (kW-
hours) consumption. Considering the fact that about 53% of the final
cement product of the combined grinding system was produced by
the HPRM circuit without being subjected to ball milling, we could
separately calculate the specific energy consumptions of the HPRM
and ball mill circuits as 34.6 kWh/t and 26.0 kWh/t, respectively.
This lower specific energy consumption in the ball mill circuit could
be due partly to the lower size reduction ratio achieved in the ball
mill circuit than that in the HPRM circuit, and partly to the particle-
weakening effect of the upstream HPRM. The size reduction ratio,
which is defined as the ratio of the feed median size to the ground
product median sizes, provides a simple means for comparing size
reduction processes [11]. For the same energy efficiency, larger
reduction ratios demand larger specific energy consumptions. The
size reduction ratio for the ball mill circuit in the combined grinding
circuit was only about 4 while receiving a HPRM-crushed feed of
100-μm median size and producing a cement product of 25-μm medi-
an size. The reduction ratio was about 335 for the HPRM circuit for
grinding the clinker feed with a median size of about 6 mm down to
a cement product of 18-μm median size. This large difference be-
tween the reduction ratios must be the main reason for having
lower specific energy consumption in the ball mill circuit despite
 C. Hosten, B. Fidan / Powder Technology 221 (2012) 183–188
the well-known fact that size reduction in the ball mill is intrinsically
less energy efficient than in the HPRM. In addition, inter-particle
stresses generated within the compressed bed of the HPRM has
been claimed to impart internal flaws in the particles, leading to the
weakening effect which was shown to enhance energy efficiency in
the subsequent ball milling step [12].
3.3. Mortar properties of the cements produced
Table 3 compares the most important mortar properties of the ce-
ments produced in the investigated grinding systems, namely, water
demand, setting times, and compressive strength. These properties
are particularly influenced by chemical composition and reactivity
of cements, particle size distribution, particle shape, surface area,
and by the type and quantity of the added sulfate agent.
The water demand has two components, namely, the physical
water demand and the chemical water demand. The physical compo-
nent of the water demand is for moistening of the particles and filling
of the void volume between the particles. This physical component
constitutes the majority of the total water demand and is determined
primarily by particle size distribution. The chemical component is of
much smaller quantity which is required for the chemical reactions
between the cement constituents and the added water, essentially
for initial hydration of the tricalcium aluminate (C3A) to form ettrin-
gite (calcium trisulfoaluminate) [10]. The quantities and reactivities
of the C3A and the sulfate agent (gypsum) are mainly responsible
for the chemical component of the water demand and the setting be-
havior. A previous study [13], however, indicated that, with cements
of different reactivities but of the same size distribution and the
same Blaine fineness of 3000 cm 2/g, the water demand of the
sulfate-adjusted cements differed by only about 0.5 to 1.5 percentage
points around a water demand of 25%.
The water demand test results shown in Table 3 do not allow any
differentiation to be made between the cements investigated in this
work, confirming the findings of the earlier works [13,14] in that
the water demand is predominantly governed by the particle size dis-
tribution rather than the mode of grinding. In another investigation
[15], however, water demands of HPRM products were reported to
be higher than ball mill products of similar particle size distribution
and chemical composition, and the difference was attributed to the in-
ternal surface area generated by the cracks within the clinker particles
produced by high compression stressing in the HPRM. It is possible that
the internal surface area can increase, at least to a certain extent, the
total surface area available for hydration reactions, thereby, increasing
the chemical water demand, a comparatively insignificant component
of the total water demand. It appears from the results in this work
that such a potential effect of the HPRM was not detectable for practical
purposes under the tested operating conditions.
The variation in the initial and final setting times of the investigat-
ed cements was considerably different. The combined-grinding ce-
ment had the shortest initial and final setting times, followed by the
HPRM-only and horizontal-roller-mill cements, in the increasing
order. The horizontal-roller-mill cement demonstrated the longest
total active setting time (111 minutes), defined as the final setting
Table 3
Mortar properties of the product cements.
Water Setting times
demand
Initial (min.)
(%)
Combined grinding system 28.9 145
HPRM-only system 29.5 160
Horomill® system 28.6 182
* Figures in parentheses are standard deviations of four replicates.
187
time minus the initial setting time. The total setting time was the
same (69 minutes) for the combined grinding and the HPRM-only
systems even though the cement from the former system displayed
a more rapid initial setting than that of the latter system. The initial
and final setting times seem to follow a trend with the measured tem-
peratures of the cements from the grinding systems of this study
(Table 2); the higher the cement temperature is, the shorter the set-
ting times. The cement temperature dependency of the setting times
suggests that, in agreement with the previous studies [16,17], the
form of calcium sulfate produced by mill conditions might have
affected the setting times. The increased temperature and long resi-
dence times in the grinding mill can cause dehydration of the added
gypsum from dihydrate (CaSO4.2H2O) to hemihydrate (CaSO4.1/
2H2O), which dissolves more readily than dihydrate, and/or to soluble
anhydrite III (CaSO4). An adequate proportion of hemihydrates is very
effective for controlling the early C3A hydration but, if the hemihy-
drates content is too high, then stiffening or even a false set may
occur in cements with low quantity and reactivity of C3A due to the
precipitation of part of the hemihydrates to yield secondary gypsum
crystals [2]. Considering the fact that about 47% of the cement
produced in the combined grinding system was exposed to a tempera-
ture of about 112 °C in the ball mill and considering the dehydration
behavior of the gypsum used in this study (Fig. 1), combined-
grinding cement might have had an excessive amount of hemihydrate
causing shorter setting times by secondary gypsum formation. This
argument, however, remains to be the subject of further investigations
involving direct measurement of the form of calcium sulfate in the ce-
ment products from the grinding systems of this study.
Compressive strength development for all ages, from 1 day to
28 days, in the HPRM-only cement was significantly higher than
those of the combined-grinding and horizontal-roller-mill cements,
the latter two having almost the same strength development
(Table 2). The superiority of the HPRM cement was more noticeable
at early strength (1 to 7 days) development. This might be attributed
to the possible increase in the reactivity of the tricalcium silicate (C3S)
phase by high-pressure compression, which to a great extent controls
the short-term strength development. The form of the calcium sulfate
in the cement is another factor that is likely to affect strength devel-
opment. It is reported that the presence of hemihydrate reduces the
strength of cement mortars due to rehydration of part of the hemihy-
drate present in the cement [16]. The combined-grinding cement had
a higher potential for gypsum-to-hemihydrate conversion because of
having been exposed partly to a much higher temperature in the ball
mill. However, it showed almost the same strength development as
the horizontal-roller-mill cement which had no potential for hemihy-
drate formation at the measured cement temperature of 48 °C. There-
fore, the effect of hemihydrate on cement strength, if any, does not
seem to be important in this study.
4. Conclusions
Based on the data obtained from the industrial production and
testing for mortar properties of CEM I 42.5 R Portland cements pro-
duced from the same clinker/gypsum feed ground to almost identical
Compressive strength, MPa*
Final (min.) 1 day 2 days 7 days 28 days
214 16.25 (0.37) 27.85 (0.55) 42.13 (0.39) 55.10 (0.98)
229 22.53 (0.38) 35.63 (0.82) 48.98 (0.82) 57.85 (0.59)
293 17.23 (0.33) 28.20 (0.59) 43.13 (0.86) 53.63 (0.39)
188 C. Hosten, B. Fidan / Powder Technology 221 (2012) 183–188
Blaine fineness with three different grinding systems, the following
conclusions could be deduced:
• Due to the high efficiency of the air classifiers closing the grinding
mills, the three grinding systems produced cements with quite sim-
ilar particle size distributions having more or less the same RRSB
slope parameter. The RRSB position parameter of the cement from
the combined grinding system (HPRM/ball mill, each having its
own air classifier) was, however, slightly coarser because of the
coarser size distribution of the cement product from the air classifi-
er closing the ball mill.
• The combined grinding system had the lowest specific energy
consumption (30.6 kWh/t) followed by the HPRM-only system
(34.0 kWh/t) and the horizontal roller mill system (37.3 kWh/t)
when the systems were operated at throughputs close to their
plant design capacities. In the absence of throughput-dependent
specific energy measurements with each of the systems, this com-
parison should be considered more of case-specific rather than an
absolute one.
• The type of the grinding system did not have a clearly noticeable
effect on water demand, whereas it was noticeably influential on
setting times and strength development. The cement generated in
the combined grinding system had the shortest setting times, and
the HPRM-only cement had the highest strength development.
• The variations in the setting times seemed to be related with the
temperature differences in the product cements probably causing
different extents of gypsum dehydration, but this must be substan-
tiated with further investigations.
Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge the plant management at the
Denizli Cement Plant (Turkey) for their permission to conduct and
publish this work. The plant staff is also thankfully acknowledged
for their help and close interest during the work.
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C. Hosten received his B.S. degree in 1973 and M.S. degree in 1976 in mining engineer-
ing from Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara-Turkey. After receiving his
Ph.D. degree in mineral process engineering from University of California at Berkeley in
1982, he joined the faculty in the Department of Mining Engineering of METU, where
he continues as Professor. His major research interests have been directed towards
the processing of minerals and particulate materials, and particularly comminution,
coagulation/flocculation and filtration.
B. Fidan received his B.S. degree in mining engineering in 2006 and M.S. degree in
cement engineering in 2011 from Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara-
Turkey. In 2007, he started to work at the Denizli Cement Plant (Turkey) as raw materials
engineer, where he continues as the cement production chief. He has been actively in-
volved in commissioning of new cement grinding systems since 2009.