Economic Feasibility of Wet-to-Dry Conversion in North America

Although many papers have dealt with the topic of comparing the economic, thermal, and power efficiencies of wet process versus dry process, few have addressed the overall financial impact to the cement plant owner, namely, the acceptance of an investment decision based on project cost and return on investment. A computer model was developed to evaluate the capital budgeting decision taking into account the investment cost, fuel and power consumption, labor costs, inflation, depreciation, replacement parts, and economies of scale. Six cases of conversion from wet process to completely dry process were investigated for economic feasibility. These cases were selected to cover a range of considerations applicable to wet process plants currently operating in North America. The results show that the increased operating costs for wet process plants will now adequately justify the decision to convert to a completely dry process.