GLOBAL CEMENT: GRINDING

Osama Aly Ahmed, Technical Consultant

Major vertical roller mill breakdown...again?

One of the most common problems in vertical roller mills (VRMs) around the world is a
failure of the main gear unit. In this article, Osama Aly Ahmed looks at a case-study in
which a 400t/hr VRM was fixed at an Egyptian cement plant after an unexpected shutdown.

O n 15 February 2017 engineers detected a tem-

perature rise in one of the roller bearings of a
a 400t/hr VRM at an Egyptian cement plant. At this
point the decision was taken to change the two roll-
ers, A and B, with the rising temperature observed in
roller B. Before the VRM was stopped on 20 February
2017, there was no alarm to indicate that the situa-
tion was critical. The mill was vibrating normally,
the oil temperature and gearbox were observed to be
normal and there was no clogging of the filter.
However, upon opening the roller bearing with
the elevated temperature, metallic particles were
found in the oil. When the inspection door of the
gearbox was opened, it became clear that there had
been, unfortunately, a big failure
By pulling out the gearbox under the mill, it could
be seen that the axial thrust bearing and the cover
had been damaged, dismantling the planetary gear
and damaging the bearing. The decision was taken
to change seven bearings as a preventive proce-
dure. One was not changed due to a anticipated 20
month delivery time and the fact that the bearing
was observed to be in good condition. The thrust
bearing and cover were machined in the plant’s
local workshop.
Maintenance time
Unfortunately a lot of time was spent time on the ra-
paid because the stoppage was unplanned. There was
no crane at the plant to remove the rollers, meaning
a wait of two days and no established procedure to
open the gearbox, which led to one day lost. As the
dismantling was taking place, special tools had to
be prepared as the situation demanded (1 day lost).
There were no bearings at the plant (2 days lost).
There were also delays to the machining of the cover,
which eventually had to be repeated (7 days in total).
In total the elongated repair time led to a total kiln
stoppage of 36 days.
n
Pabs.  i    k  DR  WR  DM    (Eq. 1)
60
By using Equation 1, the safety factor of the VRM
was calculated at 1.4, where DEFINE PARAMETERS,
DEFINE PARAMTERS, DEFINE PARAMETERS,
DEFINE PARAMETERS, DEFINE PARAMETERS.
For mills with a rated power >2000kW, the rec-
ommendation is to have safety factor of 2.0. The
reducers should be equipped with three stages,
reducers should be equipped with friction type bear-
ings, mill control system and tripping conditions.
Recommendation of the fault analysis
The fault was traced to ingress of foreign material
into the gearbox casing. However, other factors also
hindered the plant’s response to the unplanned out-
age. Some recommendations are outlined below.

20
18
16 9
2
Left: Reducer failures become 14
No. of reducers

more likely at higher power 12

4
ranges, necessitating a higher 10 9 8
safety factor. Numbers taken 8
from DEFINITION NEEDED, SAM- 14
6 11
PLES ARE FROM WHERE? 10
4 9
5 6
2 1
2 2 1
0
<500 500-1000 1000-1500 1500-2000 2000-2500 2500-3000 3000-3500 3500-4000 >4000
Power (kW)

16 Global CementMagazine November 2017 www.GlobalCement.com

 GLOBAL CEMENT: GRINDING

Vibration monitoring: It is recommended that all of

the reducers are monitored to detect failures early on
to give sufficient time to anticipate imminent failures.
Visual inspections, oil analysis, vibration measure-
ment and frequency analysis should be employed in Left: Inside the gear unit.
all reducers via a continuous condition monitoring
system to be supplied by Dalog. Five sensors inside
the VRM’s gearbox were found to not actually be
linked to the central control room.
It was also recommended that transmitters be in-
stalled, which will become operational in June 2018.
These should be integrated with the other sensors to
afford complete monitoring. Dalog will complete the
set-up during the next kiln shutdown. There should
also be special on-the-job training for inspectors
and operator training, preventive maintenance and
Left: Dismantling the gear unit.
reducer instrumentation.
Standard velocity probes (Schenck or similar)
should be used to measure root mean square (RMS)
values of the vibration between 10Hz and 1000Hz
at the base plate in the vertical direction. The most
pronounced mill vibration (natural frequencies) are
7-9Hz and therefore are filtered out with standard
probe. Important vibrations are in radial (horizon-
tal) direction and not picked up in vertical mounting.
Vibrations are more pronounced on the top of the
table than on the base plate. Left: Table pads.

Optimise: The VRM currently works at a very high

specific grinding force of 800kN/m. It is recom-
mended that the hydraulic pressure be reduced to
120bar in steps by June 2018. In order to prevent
a reduction of the output of the raw mill when
decreasing the hydraulic pressure, the air flow (quan-
tity, speed, nozzle ring area, recicrulation material
parameters and separator reject chute and other
parameters must be addressed. A complete study of Left: Bearing failure due
both the maintenance and process operation of the to contamination.
VRM, to be completed during June 2018, will look
at the speed of the nozzle ring, recirculation rate, gas
velocity profile and pressure drop.

Contingency planning: There is a need for a far

better and more developed contingency plan in the
event of future failures. The specific resources to re-
move the reducers and potential repair shops have
been identified. The sets of immediately-available
spare parts available has been reviewed.

Conclusion
It is no secret that VRMs are very often capacity bot-
Left: Bearing failure due
tlenecks in cement plants. Careful attention should
to contamination.
be given to keeping them in good condition, as they
are crucial to the smooth running of the plant. As
this ‘worst-practice’ example demonstrates, the les-
sons are not difficult to learn. Cement producers can
easily avoid the cost of lost production due to VRM
main drive failures.

www.GlobalCement.com Global Cement Magazine November 2017 17