Energy and Exergy Assessment of a New Heat Recovery Method in a Cement Factory

Cement plants are one of the massive energy consumers and greenhouse gas producers. Processes that are carried out in a cement factory have considerable energy losses which are mostly happening because of exhausted gases and airflow for cooling the clinker. Energy consumption in a regular plant is 25% electrical and 75% thermal. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to represent a thermal recycling system in cement plants to generate power from high-temperature exhaust gases from the preheater and cooler’s high-temperature air. Thermodynamic analysis has been carried out by EES software and exergy efficiency and exergy destruction of each component of the system have been obtained. Moreover, a parametric study on the suggested cycle has been used which obtained results shows that if the input temperature and pressure of turbines get closer to the critical point of the expanded working fluid in turbines, the rate of net output work increases which lead to increasing of exergy efficiency of the whole system. The increased network of the cycle was almost 20% which would rise from 3497 kW to 4186 kW and exergy efficiency would rise from 38% to 45.94%.