System modernization in a Ball mill + Roller Press system Planta El Puente — SOBOCE

Because of the growing demand in the Bolivian market for cement, SOBOCE made the decision to perform the implementation of a closed circuit Roller Press (RP) inside the closed circuit of an existing Ball mill (BM) in order to double the total production capacity of the entire system. The existing ball mill control system was based in Hard-wired logic, but the new RP control system required a PLC logic system. Taking advantage of this project, due to the need to have a new Control system based on PLC technology for the new RP system, a requirement was born to upgrade all the hard wired logical system of the existing BM and implement a new control platform for the new RP system and for the existing BM (MCC, MV starter, etc) plus the existing and new instrumentation for the entire system. Also change the existing three Weight feeders of raw material for new ones. Everything considering: that the new control system platform and the hardware structure will be the future platform for all the other departments in Plant such as the kiln. The maximum shutdown time allowed performing all the mentioned changes and the interconnection between systems was 5 days.