Author: Mark S. Kuhar

New President and CEO of the Portland Cement Association Speaks Out On the Cement Industry, Its Regulatory Burden and Building Codes, Among Other Topics. By Mark S. Kuhar Congratulations on being named president and CEO of the Portland Cement Association. Can you tell our readers a little bit about your background? It’s a real honor to lead a prestigious organization…

A Pipe Conveyor Replaces a Drag Chain Conveyor and Throws Schwenk Zement a Curve. By Mark S. Kuhar Schwenk Zement KG replaced its old drag chain conveyor line with a modern pipe conveyor from Beumer Group. Requiring a solution that would transport alternative fuels such as crushed plastic material, textiles and paper from the warehouse to the feeding system of…

Automatic Data Collection And Real-Time Reporting Benefit Cement Manufacturer. By Mark S. Kuhar Dry cement may look like a hodgepodge of soot and gravel when it pours out of the bag, but each package is the result of a carefully calculated process. With more than a dozen possible components – which can differ based on the aggregate “recipe” needed for various…

Air Cannons Hammer Preheater Buildup At Nebraska Cement Plant. By Mark S. Kuhar The largest American-owned cement manufacturer in the nation has solved a buildup problem in the precalciner of its Nebraska plant by installing a network of high-performance air cannons, improving material flow and drastically reducing the need to hydro-lance. The series of 25 air cannons from Martin Engineering…

At GCC America’s Rio Grande Plant, A Crusher Meets The Need For A Clean Cement Additive. By Mark S. Kuhar A new Lokotrack ST2.8 mobile scalping screen is helping a Colorado cement plant to produce a clean additive for its production process, resulting in significant cost savings. GCC America’s Rio Grande plant, located south of Pueblo, Colo., requires a very…

Holcim (US) operates the largest single-kiln line cement-producing facility in the world: the Ste. Genevieve plant in Missouri. When the facility went on-stream in 2009, it required 28 large variable frequency drives (VFDs), with power ratings of 350 to 5,500 hp, to power its fans, mill drives and kiln drives. Ste. Genevieve produces hundreds of tons of cement per hour…

Lafarge Canada’s Exshaw, Alberta, Plant Installs a Stack Silencer That Has Reduced Sound Levels and Created Community Good Will. By Mark S. Kuhar The installation included 13 silencer modules. In January 2012, Lafarge North America finally said “no” to noise. At that time, they saw the completion of an intensive engineering project at its cement plant in Exshaw, Alberta, Canada, by…