LAFARGE EXSHAW
Lafarge North America is the largest diversified supplier of construction materials in the United States and Canada. Their products are used in residential, commercial, and public works construction projects across North America.
Located at the edge of the Rocky Mountains, Lafarge’s Exshaw cement plant produces materials from cement to ready-mix concrete to stone and asphalt.
The Challenge
In late 2005, Lafarge contacted AirStream because its Exshaw plant was experiencing issues with an inefficient kiln fan. At the time, we identified that in addition to being inefficient, the fan had limited production capacity, and was causing production bottlenecks due to kiln downtime.
The Solution
Following a thorough investigation, AirStream proposed a turnkey project with a guaranteed simple payback of 1.26 years. Project costs were kept to a minimum by using the existing fan housing, inlet boxes, duct connections, coupling, bearings, and motor.
The Results
In late 2007, AirStream supplied and installed a new rotor in the existing fan housing. Additionally, a fan system effect was corrected by modifying a duct elbow near the fan inlet.
Immediately after startup, the plant operations noticed that motor power had dropped by 24 percent and fan speed was much lower. After several months of successful operations, AirStream conducted verification testing to ensure that the kiln fan was performing to spec. Our tests indicated that power consumption was reduced by 633 kW. The project also exceeded expectations, with actual simple payback in 1.06 years.
