The works owned by Rugby Cement at Rugby is alongside their existing facility and is the first major cement works to be built in the UK for 10 years. The complete project, designed and built at a cost of £120m comes into service in the third quarter of 1999. Rugby Cement requires the facility - capable of producing 1.35 million tonnes of cement per year - in order to maintain its market share, improve efficiency, cost base and environmental performance.
The new works will be one of the most modern in the world and set a new benchmark for the UK cement industry. Once completed, two of the firms other sites will be closed. The Combined Materials Store was one of the first structures to be completed. Sited outside the quarry complex, the 135m x 65m combined storage building, houses the fuel (Coal & Petroleum Coke) and the raw materials (Stone and Clay, Sand & Oxide). Now successfully completed, the old fuel stores have now been demolished.
The CMS is able to receive, via road vehicles, the main raw materials and fuel for the new works and store in the following quantities. Fuels Raw Materials Coal - 1500 Tonnes, Clay - 2000 Tonnes, Petroleum Coke - 1700 Tonnes, Sand - 500 Tonnes, Oxide - 180 Tonnes. The fuel is tipped into underground feeders. The products are conveyed and deposited into 100 tonne central hoppers. Once the hoppers are full, an ultrasonic level control activates a tripper conveyor which deposits the excess fuel into the floor storage areas. An automated unmanned grabbing crane transfers this material to storage. Again level sensors determine the height of the deposited fuel to maintain a level store. The stone and clay is deposited and stored in similar ways to the fuel. Stone and Clay is tipped and conveyed into 2No. 300 tonne hoppers, once the hoppers are full a shuttle conveyor deposits the material into the floor storage area. The automated unmanned grabbing crane transfers this material to storage. Sand is tipped and conveyed by an automated unmanned grabbing crane into a 100 tonne hopper with level controls.
Because of difficulty with handling and environmental impact Rugby Cement specified that the oxide is deposited into a feeder and stored into a stainless steel silo via a bucket elevator. To allow construction work to continue in other areas since the existing fuel store has been out of service, a temporary handling system has been installed by Fairport to service the original Kiln. In 1999 Q3, the final part of the plant and the new kiln will be in operation, Fairport will by then have installed conveyors to service the facility with fuel and raw materials. Once operational, the kiln control system will request fuel, and the CMS will respond by activating a volumetric feeder to extract coal/pet coke out of the central hoppers. The fuel is then conveyed and screened (for tramp, ferrous, non ferrous material) into the new fuel mill. The CMS facility feeds the new raw material mill via weigh feeders which proportion the ratio of material correctly for the mill to manufacture the product.
The construction programme commenced in April 1997, with construction starting in September 1997 and is due for completion in July 1999 once the new mills and kiln are complete. In addition to the materials handling system, Fairport engineers also wrote the process control philosophy for the CMS facility based on the original Rugby Cement specification. The plant has been designed to run without any operatives, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Having completed the CMS facility Fairport Engineering has recently commenced work on the K050 work package, a £1.5m cement outloading system.